Regarding distractions, I’ve found IM and Twitter difficult because I use them for work as much as I do for procrastination, so often turning them off isn’t really helpful. I do, though, need to be a bit more sparing with their use.

And as regards knowing why your doing something again, couldn’t agree more. That’s a conversation I’ve been having with myself and Kev for a while, and I think I’m coming up with some answers at last…!

To help with that, I’ve learned two tricks.

First, review early and often. Every Monday, I go through all my to do lists and decide what really needs doing that week. I try and use a bit of creative visualisation for this: imagine the end of the week. What amount of stuff would you need to get done to look back and say “that was a good week’s work”? I then review things at the end of the week, and see how I’ve done. Daily - before anything else, including email - I look at what needs doing that week, and see how it’s going.

Second, minimise distractions. If an application isn’t my centre of attention, I close it. If a tab is open on my browser and I’m not going to look at it in the next half an hour, I close it. I turn off sounds on any alerts, and only use “interrupt-based” software (like Twitter) cautiously.

Finally, while attention and focus are everything when it comes to actually doing things deeply and well, there’s a stage before that which really defines your work: thinking about what matters to you, why you do things. When you’re doing dull stuff (as everyone does), just try and remind you why you’re doing it - why it matters. It makes it much easier to refocus.