How to tame the distraction beast

You sit down at your desk, ready to crack into the task you've been given. Suddenly, an email pops in. You answer it and get back to the task. Minutes pass until once again you're distracted - there's a commotion in the office kitchen. Everybody drops their work to see what's going on and the task sits waiting to be finished.

If this sounds familiar, you might be one of those EAs that easily loses focus when interruptions come knocking. But it doesn't have to be that way. Here are a couple of ways you can slay the distraction dragon.

1. Be wary of multitasking

The nature of an EAs job is that some multitasking is inevitable, jumping as you do between the various tasks your Executive has set you. Staying in the multitask mindset all day, however, is a recipe for disaster. When you have something that needs your full attention, turn off notifications, close all your irrelevant tabs and tell yourself that any small tasks can wait until this larger one is finished.

2. Stay aware of where your attention lies

Sometimes when we get distracted, we don't even notice we've abandoned the task we'd set ourselves - 10 cat videos later, we realise half an hour has slipped by. Being mindful of your attention span can help you pull out of a distraction cycle earlier.

3. Know your brain's schedule

Some of us are morning people while others are night owls. It doesn't matter which you are, but it is important that you know where your natural tendencies lie. Setting yourself a block of time to do concentration-intensive tasks in the morning or afternoon (depending on what works for you) can help keep your brain on track.

Can intuition be trusted?

EAs work in fast-paced environment. As such, sometimes they mightn't have the time to make careful, considered decisions - they have to rely on their gut reaction. But can these intuitive judgements be trusted?

What is intuition?

Intuition is a result of humans' evolved ability to see patterns in the world around us. Al Pittampalli in Psychology Today writes that a simple metaphor for understanding this is imagining a giant spreadsheet in our brains. On the vertical axis lies the patterns that we've identified in the world, on the horizontal all the things (be they cues, goals, typical actions, sights et cetera) we've associated with that pattern. Upon encountering these things in the world, our brain searches this spreadsheet for any associated pattern. If it finds one, it spits it out in the form of a gut reaction. But as we all know, sometimes these snap judgements are not as trustworthy as they feel.

When is intuition reliable?

The psychologist Gary Klein argues that gut reactions can be trusted if the situation said reactions are made in fulfils two conditions. The first is predictability and structure - if the situation is one you've been in before, you have experience of, and is relatively similar each time you're in it, intuition has a solid chance of being reliable. The second is whether the situation allows for you to get feedback on you performances. If it does, you can hone your intuitive judgements over time.

If a situation doesn't have those characteristics, then the chances of gut judgements being accurate are greatly diminished.

How to form a new habit

Habits are responsible for around 40 per cent of our daily behaviour, according to researchers from Duke University. It's important, then, that if you want to make a change to how you do things day-to-day you know how to form new habits. Here are a few tips how.

Start small

When you're first starting a new habit, it can be tough to find the willpower to continue with it. Keep your motivation up by breaking the change into smaller actionable goals. For example, if you're wanting to study towards a new professional qualification, instead of starting with "study for an hour every night", go with the easier to commit to "study for 10 minutes each night". Without the dread of a huge amount of time, you should find it easier to begin studying. With time you can build up to the larger goal.

Give yourself a visual reminder

The comedian Jerry Seinfeld employs a useful visual trick to keep him on track with his goal of writing everyday. He puts a calendar that spans a year on the wall and each day that he writes, he puts a large cross on that day. Once he gets on a run of days, he doesn't want to see the pattern broken - the desire for the visual streak to continue is enough to motivate him to write.

Some tips for successful networking

The value of an extended professional network can't be overlooked. You never know when you'll need a person with certain skills, or a mutual connection with somebody of influence. This is especially true for EAs - sometimes the factor that can make a deal for your Executive going through is back-channels of communication - the 'who knows who' effect. Here are some tips for networking like a pro.

Offer value without expecting anything in return

This is a favoured tactic of Jon Levy, an independent marketing consultant with an impressive professional network. By giving something of value first - without expecting a reciprocated reward - you have the chance to build a trustworthy relationship. Influential people are sceptical of others' motives, so making the first move lowers the risk of them letting you into their circle.

Follow up

You met someone you'd really like to keep in touch with at an event. How do you make sure they become a part of your network and not just some person you met, never to be seen again? Contact them! All it can take is a friendly email or an add on LinkedIn and you can make the chances they'll remember your name in the future all the more likely.

3 ways to clarify your writing

A large part of an EAs job is communication. Whether it's in an email to a colleague or in a post for your company newsletter, written communications are things that are sometimes liable to misinterpretation. It's not hard to see why - facial expressions, tone of voice and body language are removed, and all that readers have to understand meaning is the words themselves. This is why clarity in writing is so important. What can you do to improve yours?

1. Know what you're trying to say

Simple advice that's often overlooked, knowing what you want to say before you say it is important to clear writing. If you start bashing away at your keyboard before your thoughts are in order, the end result is likely to be a confusing mess. Take the time before you write to clarify your message in your head.

2. Make your sentences short

The longer your sentences, the more information your reader has to hold in their brain. Short sentences force you to clarify your points and help you avoid rambling. And in the age of Twitter, short sentences also have the advantage of holding readers' attention longer too.

3. Choose short words

The fewer complicated words you can use, the better. Comprehension is retarded by using words readers might not understand. If a sentence requires a pause to grasp its meaning, change it. Your readers will thank you.

How to use Google to find information fast

Finding information quickly in the twenty-first century is largely a product of how well you can use Google. Here are few tricks to remember that'll help you find what you're looking for, fast.

Use quotes to find a specific phrase

Surrounding your search term with quote marks will tell that the search engine you only want results containing that specific phrase, with the words in that specific order. This can be helpful when you're looking for something with an exact phrase, rather than a result that's perhaps loosely related to the words in question.

Exclude certain terms from your results

You can exclude certain kinds of things from your results by putting the search term in quote marks and then adding a - symbol, as well as the term you wish to be excluded. For example, if you wanted to search for the clothing brand "Fred Perry", not the tennis player the brand was named after, you could search "Fred Perry" -tennis.

Search within a certain website

Many websites don't have good search functionality built into them. You can leverage the power of Google's search technology and look for things on a specific site from the Google search engine itself. For example, if you wanted to search the EAN website, you could type "site:https://www.executiveassistant.com" followed by your search term, and Google would spit out results only from that domain.