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Twenty-eight percent of workers are more distracted by email than anything else, while social media accounts for 23 percent of all workplace distractions, according to a 2026 report from Gitnux. Forty-seven percent of workers report being interrupted by an email at least once every 10 minutes, and 70 percent are distracted by social media five times or more an hour. This means digital tools top the list of distractions at work for the majority of us.
All those dings, beeps, messages, and emails take a toll on productivity. On average, workplace distractions reduce productivity by approximately 40 percent.
Though some digital tools harm our productivity, there are others that can be used to recover lost time and boost efficiency. Here are five of the best digital tools and systems for greater productivity.
Tracking Time to Save Time
There’s a business adage that “what gets measured gets managed.” This holds true for time, as with any other resource. The first step to using time well is to realize where it’s being wasted. Tracking your time throughout the workday—even if just for a week or two—allows for this kind of analysis.
Apps like Clockify allow you to measure how much time you’re spending on specific tasks, websites, or software. This could also be accomplished on a spreadsheet or with pen and paper.
Once you’ve gathered enough data, you can examine it for “time holes”—a.k.a., the activities that eat up the most time. Where is your time disappearing into low-impact work tasks? Where is it disappearing into non-work tasks like games, social media, and internet browsing? With the answers to these questions, you can adjust your schedule and habits to eliminate or reduce time hogs.
Taming the Email Monster
As the above statistics indicate, email constitutes one of the biggest time-wasters during work hours. The ease of email communication has encouraged people to treat email almost like a chat messaging service, proliferating poorly thought-out emails that could be either skipped or consolidated—not to mention the gobs of marketing emails that clutter our inboxes, all of which are a partial or total waste of time.
When an important or useful email does materialize in the inbox, we get a small dopamine hit, which trains us to check email far more often than is really necessary. In my own experience, I often use email checks as a form of procrastination, putting off actually useful work time with the excuse that I need to see if any important messages have come in. This problem is worse for folks who have enabled desktop notifications for every new email message.
The solution is simple. Email checking and responding can be “batched” and limited to two or maybe three preset times each day. For instance, only check and respond to email at 9:00 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. Outside those blocks of time, close the email client completely. And always disable desktop notifications.
If you’re concerned that coworkers or clients will be confused by your unavailability during certain hours, you could set up an auto-response that says, “Thanks for your email. I’m currently engaged in some focused work time. I will check and respond to important emails at 12:30 PM. If your message is urgent, you can contact me at [phone number].”
Streamlining the Scheduling Process
“Do you have any availability next week?” “Yes, what times are you available?” “Monday and Tuesday at 2:00.” “That doesn’t work for me. What about the following week?” “I’m on vacation that week…”
Most of us have experienced an email chain like this when trying to schedule a work meeting or Zoom call. Eight emails later, a date and time are finally established, though they might be forgotten if the email chain gets lost.
A much more efficient way to schedule meetings is using an online calendar or scheduling app. These apps allow you to enter the timeslots that you’re free, and when someone wants to meet with you, you send them a link to the calendar where they can book an available slot. One email. Not eight.
There are free versions (like Calendly) and paid versions (like Calendar.com). Which app you need depends on the complexity of your scheduling needs.
Cutting Distractions With Leechblock
This simple browser extension has restored hours of productive time to my workday. Leechblock allows you to block specific websites completely or for pre-specified time blocks. When you attempt to access websites you’ve previously blocked, Leechblock will prevent the action and deliver a reminder or message of your choice, like “Distractions reduce productivity by 40 percent.”
By blocking all the websites that used to cause me the most distractions, I’ve effectively forced myself to stay on track throughout the day. I slip into far fewer internet rabbit holes than I used to. Even though the blocking can be disabled, that additional friction prevents me from mindlessly clicking onto websites every time work becomes a little tiring.
As Tim Ferriss points out in “The 4-Hour Workweek,” a “low-information” diet is key to productivity. Filtering out unimportant or irrelevant information (headlines, cat videos, messages, and even non-pressing work notifications) allows workers to stay focused on what matters, keeping their minds free of clutter that obscures clear thinking and task achievement.
Leechblock is one way to help maintain a “low-information” state. It could also be used to block email during focused work time.
Organizing Workflows With Notion
I recently began using this free, versatile note-taking and organizational software to help manage my freelance writing work and Substack business, and it’s been a game-changer. Notion can be as simple or complex as you want it to be, from a simple place to store notes to an elaborate network of databases, webpages, workflows, calendars, and checklists—a true “second brain.” As the app itself puts it, “Notion is a single space where you can think, write, and plan. Capture thoughts, manage projects, or even run an entire company.” Its flexibility makes it an invaluable tool for managing large amounts of interconnected information in a single place.
The building blocks of Notion are “pages”—discreet units of text or other information—that can be linked together, rearranged, tagged, and organized inside larger projects or databases.
One of the best productivity tools on the app is the Kanban board view, which can be used to track and manage workflows. I use it to manage my articles, tracking them from idea to published piece. On a Kanban board, pages take the form of cards, organized into various columns, such as—in my case—”Idea,” “Drafting,” “Revising,” or “Published.” Each card represents an article (or other project), which can store notes, status information, properties, contacts, and more. Cards can be dragged from one column to the next as they progress through the workflow.
This video explains how to set up a simple board workflow in Notion.
Utilizing these powerful organizational tools can save you lots of time searching for project information or trying to remember what task to do next. By combining Notion with the other tools and tricks listed in this article, you can optimize your workday and rediscover time you forgot you had.
