I am a person who easily gets distracted from work unless I have a deadline the next day. Because I am working with my laptop for most of my school related work, it is really hard for me to focus on Microsoft Word to finish my first draft essay when a little Firefox icon sits quietly on the Start menu, just waiting for me to click it so I can check the latest news and incoming e-mail. Unless you are working at a restrictive working area, many of you might share this disease of procrastination. Through experience and experiments, I finally found a solution in breaking the distraction habit. One key element is working location.

Working in an open environment with people is an influential factor for getting things done. A lot of bloggers find the local coffee shops the best place for writing blog articles, because there are surrounded by other people doing work. I cannot clearly say or even support the theory that working in a public environment will increase productivity, however I am confident that many productive blog writers would agree that working in an area surrounded by other working strangers is useful. Is it our desire to show the world of our productive image driving our productivity or is it something else?

Blogging in the local cafe is not the only example where productivity is facilitated by the mere surroundings of working people. College students study in the library because there is an underlying competition among the studying students for displaying their proud study posture to the public.

Many might deny this construction as some students say that they study in the library because of its quiet and less distracting environment. But this does not negate my observation but instead facilitate the notion that an active surrounding facilitates productivity. Sure, the quiet book stacks might not be an active environment, but the student perceive it as an active surrounding that drives his will to study. The surrounding environment must play an active force, at least in the person's mind, to motivate his will to study. If the environment is perceived as meaningless (Or empty) to the worker or the surrounding itself is a distraction, then productivity gets destroyed. Of course, some people manage to concentrate nevertheless.

I am usually a fan of working in the dark with a single desk light on. For me, there is an attractive quality in darkness. My working environment becomes simpler as the only visible object is my working desk. A little bit of background music helps too.