Tom Ritchford
1 min readMar 7, 2021

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Now, there are two different sorts of distractions.

When people come in and talk to you and demand an answer, you have to switch away from what you're thinking about. Usually you forget where you were. Big disruption.

My dog can come in and bark and I can lock him out and if I'm concentrating already, it just isn't an issue, because nothing is demanded of me intellectually.

You can learn this habit, actually - when a non-verbal interruption happens, just concentrate on thinking about what you are doing while you handle the interruption physically.

I have more than once committed a serious change, and then realized I had a dog in my lap. At some point I had to have put them there, but I really didn't pay attention.

It isn't hard to learn but it doesn't work if people want to have a conversation. Any text or informational sound is bad. This is why I turn off notifications, hide all non-necessary windows, and close my door when I really need to concentrate, and I play music with few if any lyrics (interestingly, lyrics in a foreign language, even one I understand perfectly well, just doesn't seem to be an issue.)

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