Resonance – Episode 47
Verbatim Transcript
Speaker: Viktoria Levenberg
Did you know that distractions can cost you up to 10 hours a week? 80% of people cannot go a
full hour without being distracted. Most people aren't very productive, which is why they waste
so much time and they're chasing their tails and running on empty. As soon as you can eliminate
the unnecessary distractions that you actually have agency over, then you get to stop wasting
your precious time, wasting your precious energy, and stay in that magical flow state for longer.
Isn't that awesome? I think it's pretty awesome.
Wouldn't it be amazing to get 10 hours of your week back every single week simply by
implementing four simple tweaks in how you work? By the end of this episode, you are going to
learn those exact hacks that you can implement starting today, and you will instantly see more
time, more energy, and more efficiency. Let's begin.
Welcome to Resonance, the podcast for high performers and entrepreneurs who want to do life,
work, and success differently. I am your host, Viktoria Levenberg, and I'm obsessed with
efficiency, productivity, and planning in a way that harnesses your energy and your natural
rhythms, while keeping you in alignment and integrity. Because I have figured out that lasting
success is not about the hustle, it is about being in resonance. Let's begin.
So before I share a little bit more about this really, really exciting shift you can make to truly boost
your productivity, I also want to acknowledge the fact that I am feeling pretty nervous and
excited at the moment, and that is because at the time of the airing of this episode, I am t minus
7 days away from my very first live free webinar, and I'm even like getting butterflies in my
stomach as I'm talking about it. Um, look, at the time of the recording of this episode, you know,
we're quite a fair way out, so it's all still very much in the build phase and ideation and creation,
which is why I'm not giving too much away about it just yet. Um, but just know that I'm probably
feeling pretty vulnerable and excited right now, and it would also be such a privilege and honour
to have you be one of the very first ones there. It is completely free. It is gonna be amazing. I'm
putting like so much heart and soul into it. I'm giving away some of the best content that's
generally vaulted for my private paying clients, so you definitely want to be there. There are
gonna be replays available, um, and I just wanted to speak to this because this is, um, like a really
big milestone for me. It's something very special, very exciting, so I would love to see you there.
All the details will be in the show notes below, and for now, let's dive in and get you some of that
precious, precious time back, shall we?
And look, today's episode has been inspired by a day that I recently had at my corporate day job
office where, um, I was doing some of the things that I'm about to teach you, and it like had
people gob smacked, um, which was quite interesting to see, um, and also understandable
because, you know, most people aren't very productive, which is why they waste so much time
and they're chasing their tails and running on empty. But not if you hang out with me. No, no, no,
because I'm the efficiency, productivity, and organisation queen, so let's begin.
Did you know that distractions can cost you up to 10 hours a week? That is nuts. That is a whole
quarter if you add it up over time, and we'll drill into and nerd out on the math in just a moment.
But like speaking of context switching, it is such a waste of your time, energy, and focus if you are
constantly getting distracted left, right, and center. And you know, I would say that today
humankind is more distracted than ever before. And so in today's episode, you will discover
those four simple tweaks that will unlock more of your time, more of your energy and
productivity, while getting more done easily and effectively.
Isn't that awesome? I think it's pretty awesome. That is how I work and operate. I'll give you
some real-life examples throughout the episodes, and hopefully you'll be able to play with this
over the next week as well and let me know how it goes for you. So let's dive into the nitty-gritty.
I promise you we would nerd out on the math. Let me nerd out on the math, because I love it.
Um, okay.
So I've done a bit of research and found some scary things, and those scary things are that 80%
of people cannot go a full hour without being distracted. Like I'm pretty sure that percentage is
even lower at this point, to be honest, because ever since like the age of AI and the age of TikTok
and the age of, you know, like three second reels, I joke that it's like people have the attention
span of a goldfish right now and the memory of an ant, or maybe the other way around, I don't
know, but it's just, it's really scary. And you know, even just, I think on your phone, you can see
how many times you pick up your phone during the hour, like it's a tick. It's almost like this reflex
that we've developed. And so on average, people waste 10 hours a week for distractions. It could
be all kinds of different distractions, like getting shoulder-tapped in the office, um, emails, social
media messages, um, getting sidetracked and trying to multitask. It kind of accumulates, and it's
this overarching theme of distractions.
And as you like add that up over 52 weeks, those 10 hours a week are 65 days. Like what even?
Do you realise that? That is pretty much 13 weeks of your year, which is a quarter of your year
that you waste to distractions. It blows my mind because imagine what you could do with your
life if you had an extra quarter of free time. Like maybe you would finally take up that new hobby
that you've been wanting to start, or just like chill out and do nothing and lounge on the couch
and read a book, or maybe spend some more quality time with your family and your kids who are
just growing up too quickly. It's a whole quarter, like that is 25% of your year. That is massive,
massive numbers we're talking here.
And before I dive into the specifics, I just thought that it was really important to give you some
definitions, um, specifically around what I mean when I say context switching. So context
switching is this really scary phenomenon, which is effectively, um, the loss of time, energy, and
focus every time that you switch tasks. And studies have shown that context switching costs you
between 10 to 20% of your productivity every time you switch tasks. And imagine like again, if
80% of people can't stay focused for an hour, like accumulate that throughout the work day, no
wonder people's productivity is just like plummeting and and skyrocketing, and it's really sad
actually. At, um, uh, there's this big meeting that I attend, um, that starts at 2:00 PM, and you can
just see everyone's lost it. And that is, you know, sort of basically context switching in, in, or the
cost of context switching in action. You can just see there's like zero brain cells left at that point,
which is really, really sad.
Um, and to add on top of that, it takes about 23 minutes on average for you to regain the flow
state, momentum that you had when you get interrupted. So if most of us get interrupted at
least once an hour, and it takes us 23 minutes to regain that momentum, and so then we're only
left with what, like not even a half hour basically until the next interruption, and the productivity
percentage decreases, right? Like can you just see how it's just like this downward spiral of
misery? Um, again, maths wasn't my strong suit in high school, but I know that there is some kind
of negative log function going on there, SOH CAH TOA hahaha, I don't know. Okay, let's, let's, let's
not talk math. I've got like so many memories of my big TI 84+ math calculator right now. I don't
know how I passed that course, but clearly SOH CAH TOA left its mark.
So anyway, that's even got nothing to do with log functions, but cool, let's get back. See, I just
context-switched. I just demonstrated context switching in real time for you. That, that is
basically what happens. So, um, okay, we've defined context switching, and now let's just briefly
define flow state.
Ah, I love flow state. Like flow state is the state that you are in where it's almost this, so you
actually are in a different brainwave state as well when you're in flow state, and it is just this kind
of effortless productivity momentum where you're super creative and you're super-efficient and
you're super productive, and you're just like in the zone, you know? And you're in the zone and
you're creating and the inspiration's flowing. That's literally what flow state means, right? And I'm
sure you can think of a time where you were like deeply focused on a task and just like harnessing
that flow state, and it felt like, like I had this just a few weeks ago when I was writing some
promotional emails for a launch, and I wrote like 11 emails in a few hours as it normally takes me
an hour to write an email, uh, and like that was, that was flow state in action right there. It’s just
like time and space collapse and anything is possible. So flow state is amazing, and the antidote
to flow state is context switching.
So you can see we’ve got a little bit of polarity here. So I’m gonna show you now some really
small shifts that you can make in your day-to-day work, life, and business that are gonna lead to
exponential, positively logarithmically, exponentially big shifts in your results. Because as soon as
you can eliminate the unnecessary distractions that you actually have agency over, then you get
to stop wasting your precious time, wasting your precious energy, and stay in that magical flow
state for longer.
So let’s dive into the nitty-gritty. Tip number one: turn off your pop-up notifications on your work
computer, and I’m talking all the apps. So if you use like a team communications app, whether it’s
like, you know, I don’t know, do people use MSN these days, um, you know, Teams, Slack,
whatever, Google Chat, just turn off the notifications. Turn off the pop-ups, and the same thing
for email.
Email’s even more important because literally, especially if you live, uh, if you work in a, um, the
role that receives a lot of emails, that thing’s gonna be going off nonstop. And not only is that
impacting your context switching likelihoods, it is also actually dysregulating for your nervous
system. Because like every single time that ping fires, it shoots a little alert to your nervous
system. People be like, “Ah, I gotta react, I gotta respond, ah, new email, ah, ah, ah.” Yeah, so turn
all of that off.
Like literally, on my work computer, the only notification that I still have on is for calendar
reminders. That’s it. Everything else is like, got rid of that a long time ago. Turn off the sound,
turn off the pop-ups, no need for any of that. And the thing is like, let’s be real, most of us aren’t
saving lives for a living, right? So the things that you’re receiving are unlikely to be critically
urgent.
And you can set some really great boundaries. Like if you do work in a role where sometimes
things are urgent, like to ask someone to call you or to text you or whatever it is. So, you know, I
have, I used to be the type of person who would respond to the email before you even hit send.
You know, it’s like I was like so onto it, um, and then I realised that like that was just such a waste
of my time, and I was basically in my inbox all day.
And now that I’ve turned all these notifications off, like I get to it when I get to it. So say if I have
like a bit of chunk of time that’s like dead space, you know, that like seven minutes in between
meetings was like, well I ain’t gonna get into flow state, so what else am I gonna do? Great time
to clear your inbox. Or at the end of the day, where like most of your brain cells are already gone,
and let’s be honest, most of your emails don’t require you to be at your peak mental clarity.
So that is No. 1, is turn off pop-up notifications from your work computer apps. Honestly worked
so, so well for me, and I live and swear by it, um. And there are people in my life who literally
even have phone notifications when they receive emails, and they receive like hundreds upon
hundreds upon hundreds of emails every day, and their phone’s just going off all day. It’s very,
very dysregulating, haha.
Okay, No. 2. Speaking of phones, put your phone on do not disturb anytime you’re about to enter
a dedicated focus block. So if you didn’t know, your phone, you know, I’m an iPhone user myself,
but if you’re an Android, I’m sure they have the same setting, there is like a specific button you
can press. It is super easy to access from your home screen. Just go boop, do not disturb, and it
just silences all of your notifications.
And, um, a feature that Apple has on their iPhones, you can even set up different settings. So you
can have like a sleep setting or a work setting or a personal setting. So if you’re like the type of
person who has a tendency to check work things after work hours and that’s a habit you wanna
break, you could set up your personal focus setting to make sure that all your work stuff is muted,
you know, after work, um.
And vice versa. Let’s say if you’re the type of person who really gets distracted by social media
pings and you wanna stay super focused during your work hours, you can set a work setting that
meets those things. So it’s like the notifications are still there and there’s a way to get to them,
and when you turn off the setting you see everything, but it’s, you’re not just, you’re not
constantly overstimulated with all that influx of information, right?
So that’s like super effective. I use it all the time. I literally was using it this morning as I was
preparing some of the content to share with you today and writing my notes. Like I noticed that I
was getting little notifications here and there, and um, it’s just again, it was really distracting.
Boom, off, flow state entered. It was fantastic, um, because you know, unless kept in check, our
cheeky mind will use any sneaky little excuse to get us out of being super productive. Cheeky,
cheeky, cheeky mind, um.
And the other kind of little sub-hack on the phone piece is if you really struggle with this, um,
some of the people I have spoken to, they found it quite effective to just move their phone to
another room as well. So it’s out of sight, out of mind, um, and that seems to work for them
quite well as well. So that is No. 2, put your phone on do not disturb or just move it to a different
room.
Number three: close any irrelevant tabs or apps that are not directly related to what you’re
working on, especially emails, especially social media or any like sports, Netflix situations. Now
again, these things are such a time, focus, and energy drain. And if you’re the type of person that
like leaves all your tabs open and has a million different files open and just closes their laptops
and thinks that tomorrow’s a new day and you’ll get to it tomorrow, like we’ve got a lot to talk
about.
And if so, you’re probably the perfect fit for efficiency made easy, but um, you don’t want to have
all this noise. Again, it is all noise. And if you understand, like if we take a step back and just look
at it from a neuroscience perspective, like our brain is constantly switched on, and all this
information, like it is constantly trying to filter and prioritise the information that is sitting in front
of you.
And so even if you’re like just looking at one screen, but at the top of that screen you’ve got all
these 20 million different tabs that are completely unrelated to one another, your brain will go
like, “Oh, and I, yeah, I need to remember this and blah blah blah,” and it again, it’s wasting your
energy.
And I will also add a little sneaky caveat to this, which is the way we do anything is how we do
everything. So if you’ve got 1.02 million, I don’t know, that’s not a number, but you get it,
different tabs open in your computer, chances are that’s also happening in your brain. Chances
are you need a system to capture all your ideas and tasks and plan your time, energy effectively.
So anyways, I can help with that, but for now just remember: close any irrelevant tabs or apps
that aren’t directly related to what you’re working on.
Okay, and last but definitely not least, No. 4. And this works a charm, but it might, for my people
pleasers who have a hard time with setting boundaries, be a little bit challenging at first, but
honestly works a charm. And there’s a different, couple different ways you can do it.
Okay, it is, are you ready? Buckle up, buttercup. Mm hmm, yep, you guessed it. Politely asking
anyone in your immediate vicinity, whether it’s at work, colleagues, or family members, to not
disturb you during your dedicated focus block.
So, oh my goodness, this is such a big one because human beings, honestly it shocks me, and like
this is why again for my productivity archetype and how I work best, that that is why I’m at my
best when I’m at home, um, because I don’t have to deal with rude people who interrupt you no
matter what you try to do, um.
It is really such a strange phenomenon how we think that our needs are more important than
someone else’s, um, but anyways, let’s not, you can see context switching right there, could have
gone down that side tangent avenue, but we’re gonna bring it back into our flow state, um.
So what I mean by that is if you’re at work, you can, and you can like ask people to not disturb
you, um. You can put headphones in visibly, you can, um, put a do not disturb setting on your like
little team channel situation. You could even put a sign on your desk or like on the back of the
chair. I’ve seen a few memes about that, which hey, you know, very relevant.
And also like, if someone comes up to you and interrupts you and it is genuinely not a good time
to be interrupting you, you get to say, “Can you come back to me later?” Like you don’t have to
answer right away, especially if it’s gonna be like a longer conversation.
So anytime I’m at the office and I’m in a hyper-focused state, I’m in a flow state, and someone
comes up and tries to interrupt me, I will kind of gauge. I was like, is this a quick, like less than 30
seconds question-answer situation, or are you about to suck 15 minutes of my day? Because that
15 minutes, remember context switching, add the 23, all of a sudden expands to 45 minutes of
productivity I’m about to lose.
And I would rather not waste that time on your non-urgent but seemingly more important
question. So as you can see, I’m getting quite passionate about this because I used to be in a role
that, oh my god, it had so much context switching involved. Like people were just tapping my
shoulder every freaking moment of every single day and then no wonder I was the last one in the
office because I was just a little, in German this, there's this word for it that's like “waschlappen”
um, it's like like a little um basically just you know people pleasing everyone um, my Germans will
be like whoa that's much more than that but anyways this is not a German podcast um.
So, I've got a really interesting example that's actually quite recent and um that is look, my
ultimate strategy is if you work in an office with other people around you then just make it really
visible, like put headphones in um, move to a different room you know, work from home do what
you need to but even if someone is really persistent um, let's say you've got a really chatty
coworker nearby um, you get to set those boundaries. So like again, I've got a great example in
my recent life where someone was feeling chatty and they had the time and I didn't because I am
very efficient and effective in the way I use my time and so I literally addressed that as it is. I said
like, I understand you are currently bored um however I'm really focused so I'm choosing not to
engage in this conversation and like if they think that that means you're full of it and you're mean
sure, but like do you really then want to stay at the office for another hour just because someone
was bored and wanted your attention and entertainment? That's a choice you get to make. I
would rather set that boundary um so that is I'm gonna kind of leave it at that because I know
that's probably ruffling some feathers already um.
But No. 4, politely ask anyone in your vicinity, whether it's at work, whether it's at home, to not
disturb you during your focus block. Like that is also a conversation I had to have with my partner
um and and he knows that really well as well and um it's really cute, he'll like sheepishly gaze
through the corner of my door and be like is she good and and he'll know when he's good to
come in and when I'll be like not right now. It's really sweet but that also took some conditioning
and boundaries, so um you get to set those for yourself because your time and energy are
precious and um don't let everyone walk all over you. That's just that's a recipe for feeling really
drained and wasting your time, which is the opposite of what we're here to do.
So if you right now are thinking okay well look back, thanks for that but what if someone really
needs me? Like what if they have a really urgent question and I get it, especially my people
pleasers are probably like ah how can I tell someone not to talk to me, maybe they'll think I'm
mean. Look, I've been implementing this for over 5 years now and in my experience unless there
are blood and bones, nothing's actually that urgent.
Like for example, literally in this last week I had some pings and again my pop up notifications
actually for pings are on but the sound is off, which is what I found more regulating—uh
dysregulating um and I just choose to, I'm not ignoring them, I'm just choosing to act on them
later but I guess you could label it as I chose to ignore them because I could see it's not urgent
um. And it was really funny to see because like at the end of the day I was still in my focus block,
you know getting things done, and the person that pinged me um, which means like you know
sent me a little chat um said oh, by the way ignore that message I sent you, it's all resolved. I was
like yeah, that normally tends to happen again because humans, we're just so funny, we're like ah
problem, need solution immediately and then we'll just like fire things off without thinking about
it or trying to solve it on our own first when then like five minutes of conscious thought and it's
done um, and that's exactly what happened um.
Or if it's really urgent again, like if you've got some key stakeholders in your life who you know
need to get a hold of you no matter what then have some pre-determined boundaries with
them, like if something's really urgent say this or do this. And if you live in a um, if you work in a
place where people have the tendency to shoulder tap you again, my little vetting criteria of like
how quick or short is this is super effective. And if it actually genuinely is urgent then you know
just make it quick and deal with the fact that you just lost 20% of your productivity, which is one
of the reasons why I'm so passionate about this and really, really wanna bring this work to a
larger scale over time as well because I think that if we all get to work effectively and smarter and
you know operate at our peak without sacrificing our well being and without wasting our time,
then like we will all be better off for it and and it does start at the top. However, in the meantime
we also get to influence our sphere and locus of control, which is that that you yourself
proactively have agency over. So that's what we're focusing on here um.
So hey, with that in mind um, you know just remember your emails are not DMs and nowhere in
your contract or your KPIs are you measured on your response time unless maybe you're like a
customer support rep or something. So just know that it's okay to take your time. It is okay to
proactively structure your own day. You get to set those specific dedicated focus time blocks
depending on what works best for you. Again, all things that we dive into in efficiency made easy.
And remember this capital T truth, that your energy and your time are your most valuable, most
precious assets. And if you don't put the necessary structures, systems and boundaries in place
to protect these assets, then you're basically handing them away for free like Pokémon cards.
Until all of a sudden next thing you know it's like seven PM and you're still at the office without
having gotten to any of your real actual work that you needed to do because you were too busy
meeting everyone else's needs but your own. So again, I'm speaking from experience here um. If
you have any questions whatsoever, you know you want to chat through any of this, of course
feel free to DM me on Instagram um, but there you have it. These are the four simple tweaks that
will instantly give you 10 hours of your life back so that you can enjoy time outside of work. You
can play with your kids, you can explore a new hobby, you can just chill out and rest and do
nothing rather than waste it and let it go away to distractions or pleasing people that can meet
their own needs.
So have a go, give this a try, be coachable, let me know how it works and this is again just
scratching the surface of the elite level systems that we are unpacking in Efficiency Made Easy.
But before you even decide whether or not that is the right place for you, I highly highly
recommend that you join my free webinar that I am about to run in 7 days from today. I'm so
excited, it is completely free, it is gonna be like the creme de la creme. I am so so humbled that I
have the privilege of bringing this to the world. You'll hear a little bit more about it in just a
moment and until next time have a beautiful week. I hope to see you at the webinar. Bye for now.
If you're a high performer or entrepreneur who's got big dreams and you've developed strategies
to get you closer to those dreams but you feel like there are also parts of you self-sabotaging
your success, I built something just for you. It is my signature achievement archetypes quiz that is
absolutely free, takes less than 2 minutes and it will give you instant feedback as to where your
Achilles heel is, that is your natural self-sabotaging behaviour when it comes to productivity,
planning, efficiency and organisation. And it gives you your next right step and the solution you
didn't know you needed. You'll find the link in the show notes just below. Make sure you find
your achievement archetype and let me know what it is. As a fellow achiever, I will be the first to
put my hand up that I have now mastered my Achilles heel and I can't wait for you to do the
same.
The views and opinions expressed by guest on Resonance are their own and do not necessarily
reflect the views of me, Viktoria Levenberg, LVNHealth or anyone working within the LVNHealth
brand. This space welcomes a diversity of ideas, experiences and stories and part of Resonance is
learning to take what aligns and gently leaving the rest. Also, while I am a National Board-
Certified Health and wellness coach and deeply passionate about well-being, this podcast is
intended for educational and inspirational purposes only. Resonance does not substitute
personalised medical, psychological or therapeutic advice. Always seek guidance from qualified
professionals for any physical, emotional or mental health concerns.
