A few days ago I was talking with a friend of mine who told me that he was in a lot of stress, because he has been working on a project for a while, but there appeared an error with the setup of the project, just one day before the deadline. As if that was not enough, he was online on Facebook and was a bit surprised, because I see Facebook as a very good tool of distraction. I suggested him to sign out from Facebook and concentrate on his task instead, but he had a reason. He said that Facebook was the only way he could communicate with the other two people that have been collaborating with him in the project. That excuse gave me the idea to write an article on how to deal with these types of situations and solve the problem of communication.
I know that I was also being as part of the distractions that were pulling his attention, but at least, I can argue that he was online and everybody that does that suggests that they are usually available for short chats. I recommended him to use Skype (which does not have a very active community in comparison to Facebook), or open another Facebook account at all. This in return would mean less people would be able to distract him with the updates about their latest stories of their visits at the museum, or the dinner that they had at a fancy restaurant.
I would not be surprised if people would not be compelled to implement this advice, because they think that they might lose a few minutes to open a new Facebook account, or that they are not used with the chats and voice conversations on Skype. They forget instead that those few lost moments could save them dozens of other moments, because they could better concentrate, have less stress and finish their tasks earlier.
If you are curious to know, when I gave that suggestion, he did not reply anymore.
