Distractions. It can be a dirty word for some people who are in business for themselves and maybe even for those who have a workload to get through regardless of their profession/employment status. You will spend the majority of your life working and even those who are lucky enough to love what they do can become disillusioned from time to time.
This is where "distractions" may help you shake it up & become more productive than ever! For an entrepreneur distractions are probably more deadly than those in a 9-5 working for somebody else as it is all on them to get things done which is why it has been drilled into us from a young age that you need to "get the head down" or "pull up the stocai" if you ever want to make anything of yourself.
I subscribed to this theory myself up until around the end of April 2014, as a small business owner if a friend asked me to do anything I would shoot it down immediately citing work as an excuse diagnosing myself as a full blown workaholic with a hundred things to do all the time. Of course I was really busy as I would clarify my business, Avalanche as a success but I have slowly come to find that rushing to do everything at a hundred miles an hour may not always be the best course of action and the quality of work can really suffer.
It was the realisation that my life was passing me by that made me take a step back and see some of the world and spend more time with friends on trips, even just seeing more of my native Kerry.
Other distractions such as sport and the gym in particular for me have seen my productivity actually soar and I find being in a good routine at the gym lends itself to improving work with Avalanche. Richard Branson also subscribes to working out every day to improve overall productivity and it really is a great way of distracting yourself from work while indirectly improving your performance.
Lending myself to these 'distractions' has allowed me more free time which usually ends up with me tinkering with some piece of code/software that I was playing with and tossed aside because I hit a brick wall with it but with a fresh perspective I can perhaps overcome problems that were enough to halt my progress earlier.
This allowed me to finish my Highwind software which I was playing with for a number of years and actually ended up being used in a social algorithm while its initial use was to try to calculate patterns in sport to provide accurate predictions. This was my plan while I was studying in Tralee to help fund my student nightlife but I got annoyed with its problems and tossed it aside.
I picked it back up some time later with a fresh approach to the problems and ended up selling it to a corporate giant, albeit for a different purpose. I credit this to a change of routine: instead of working for 16 hours a day for the umpteenth week running, I spent a day with friends or hit the gym, binged on Netflix, walked the dog, travelled for a few weeks etc. Whatever works for you to get some headspace.
Distractions, use them to your benefit and you can take on the world but know when to put the head down!
Aidan out.