I am wicked productive when I’m on an airplane (without wifi) and I don’t have incoming communications (email, Slack, Twitter, etc.) to distract me.
In an attempt to let out of sight lead to out of mind, I’ve made a simple tweak to hide my dock in Mac OS X and turn on “do not disturb” for Notifications. Now I don’t see the little red circles that call out to be cleared and I can keep my head in the problem I’m working on.
When I decide to take a break and hit up my distractions, it’s now a choice. I do it on my schedule, not when someone else happens to send something my way.
The only exception to this is iMessage and the handful of other things that I get alerts on my phone/wrist for. I’ve trimmed that list of things considerably and choose to let those remain real time.
Great tip! I’ve noticed that by doing these little productivity hacks, improves “zone level” longevity and overall clarity of thought.