Distraction pad

I stumbled on a neat trick today while I was trying to get some work done. Sometimes it seems like there's an endless stream of distractions when I try to focus. I reduce them as much as I can, but even so there are unavoidable distractions that come from my own thoughts: a task I've been meaning to do, something I've been meaning to look up, someone I've been meaning to get in contact with. And the problem is these things might be important, so I have to think a bit about them before I can go back to focusing.

So I started using a random notebook as a distraction pad. Anything that came into my head that might distract me, I just wrote down. And as soon as I did that, the need to think about it just melted away. The thought was dealt with now, so there was no point in dwelling on it.

Hilariously, the vast majority of things I wrote down are totally pointless. Now that I'm not working, my desire to look up how to mark an email as read from an Android watch has completely evaporated. But even knowing that I probably won't do anything with these stray thoughts, writing them down seems to convince me that they're in hand and don't need further attention.

Thanks, brain. You're a source of constant curiosity!