When You Need to Be in “The Zone,” the Phone Has Got to Go

As an introvert especially, it’s crucial for you to understand how unhelpful your phone is when you’re trying to get something done.

I was working late in the afternoon—writing a short article about (of all things) maintaining your focus while you’re working—when I heard a soft knock on the door of my downstairs home office.

It was my lovely wife, Adrianne.

My first thought, unfortunately, was:

“She should know better. She knows I’m writing, and she knows it’s hard for me to get my focus back once I’ve been interrupted.”

But she had her reasons.

Make that reason, singular.

“Katie [our then 15-year-old daughter] is texting you,” Adrianne whispered as she poked her head in the door.

I didn’t know Katie was texting me because, as I always do when I’m trying to focus, I had intentionally left my phone upstairs—out of sight, out of mind, out of earshot, and, crucially, out of attention range.

“Why the hell is Katie texting me?” 
I thought to myself, and “why does it matter right now, so much so that Adrianne would interrupt me when she knows full well she’ll be, well, interrupting me when I’m in the middle of something important?!”

I glanced at the clock in the corner of my computer screen.

It read 5:19 p.m.

Then a shot of adrenaline ran through me—milliseconds after I (finally) remembered that I was supposed to have picked Katie up from her friend Mya’s house at 5.

“Where Are Ya?”

I hustled upstairs and grabbed my phone off the top of the living room couch.

Here’s what Katie had texted:

(Yes, that’s 12 question marks.)

My response:

Katie’s reaction:

“Forgot” Is Such a Harsh Term!

Now, you may notice a certain nonchalance in Katie’s response, a certain “nothing I haven’t seen before” routine.

That’s because it was nothing she hadn’t seen before.

Earlier in the year, when school was still on, the same thing had happened, and I’d been late picking her up after classes let out.

“My father forgot me,” she liked to remind everyone after that.

And now she had even more evidence to back up that claim.

I prefer to think of these instances not as forgetting to pick up my adorable, forgiving child (he said in a lame attempt to redeem himself), but instead as doing a superb job of setting up the conditions we introverts need to get into, and stay in, The Zone—that magical place of deep concentration where we do our best work.

And you know what the key—the one key—is to getting into and staying in The Zone?

That damn phone.

As in making sure it’s nowhere near you.

Make Your Phone Scarce

Yes, there are other things you need to do as well, and I do.

I close all other programs on my computer except the one I’m working with.

I clean up my space before I get going.

I shut my door.

But nothing, nothing is more critical than making the phone scarce.

“Why not just turn the ringer off? Why not just turn notifications off?” you might ask, fairly.

It’s a good idea.

In theory.

But in reality, the phone still wins anyway.

It buzzes while it’s sitting on your desk, interrupting you.

It vibrates when it’s in your pocket, interrupting you.

It’s made—designed, after all—to interrupt you.

So the next time you really need to get something done, in The Zone, I urge you:

Forget about your phone for a while, intentionally.

Just don’t forget about your kid, or anyone else, in the process.

Er … oopy daisy.

Gotta go!