The behavior I want to change is to reduce the frequency and amount of time in which I text on my laptop when I am doing work. From my experience, I can get pretty distracted if I have the iMessage app open and constantly check to see if the number of notifications changes. To track this behavior, I tracked the two work sessions I had this weekend using a spreadsheet by noting down the time that I opened iMessage:
I then used the fishbone and connection circle models to represent this habit ecosystem. I notice with the connection circle that some things that can cause a loss of focus were also drivers to increase focus (such as: picking a song or playlist to dictate a focus block). However, for the majority of this time they were detrimental. With the fishbone model, I noticed that the environment I was trying to work in, could be a huge contributor to why I could be losing focus. I was letting myself be in an environment where the friends around me were also the ones bringing up text messages that were being sent. As result, I think next time I am going to be more intentional about eliminating the distractions that I can before I start working. More specifically, I will respond to all pending texts, close the iMessage app so I don’t see the number of notifications, and then make sure that my phones out of sight.
