Why productivity plummets at home
I just figured it out: the reason why I can never get any work done at home (at my family’s home, not my college home… that would be really bad) anymore.
It’s not that I interact with my family so much that I don’t have time to do anything. I do interact with my family, but when I’m at school I spend a lot of time with my friends. And it’s not that I mentally shut down when at home, taking the time to relax rather than think about anything. I have tons of stuff that I’d like to do, I’m just not able to do it.
The reason is that there are so many distractions at home that I can’t focus on anything for a decent period of time. I’m not talking about distractions that I’m really interested in; things like my friends wanting to hang out, etc. I’m talking about my parents talking, cooking, people coming over, the phone ringing… distractions that don’t affect me in any way whatsoever, expect that they kill my focus.
And it’s not that it just prevents me from doing work, these distractions prevent me from doing pretty much anything remotely intellectual at all. Take just now, I was reading a book (or trying to read it) and in the study my dad was on the phone, in the kitchen my mom was not only talking to my grandmother, but also cleaning up after dinner. Her phone went off and she started talking, and since I’m sitting in between these two rooms, I can’t help but pick up these conversations and lose focus on my reading.
Usually, when I’m at school, I tend to do a lot of my work (except reading) to music, which in some senses is similar to this kind of distraction. But for some reason talking always completely ruins me. It’s why I liked having a single last year, it’s why I don’t like studying with other people or in the library. And I finally realized that it’s why I am completely unproductive at home. I can’t stand when other people are talking, moving around, or doing other stuff while I’m trying to focus/study/think.
I think this is partly why teenagers learn to stay up so late in high school. They get distracted by whatever is going on at home until everyone goes to sleep, and then they start studying. Kind of reminds me of this xkcd comic. But I’m in the habit of going to be pretty early, so after my parents go to bed, I’m usually pretty tired and go to bed around an hour later. That doesn’t give me enough time to really get anything done.
Another part of the problem is that I don’t use my room when I’m at home. Aside from actually sleeping, I live in the family room, so although there is a space for me to go when I want it to be quiet, I don’t usually go there. I guess I should start taking advantage of this more, although the room does share a wall with the kitchen and I can always hear whatever is going on in there. I’ll try getting work done in there, but I have my doubts as to how successful I’ll be.
I wrote about this same problem earlier, but then the problem was very different I think. Now I find that I’m very motivated, and have tons of things that I’d like to do, but am too distracted to actually do them. And if you read that article, I mention that my freshman year I was much more productive at home, but now I can’t see how that was even possible. There’s so much going on in my house all the time (my parents wake up at like 5 and go to bed around 11) that it’s just impossible to find a good time to be productive.
I guess all the stuff I want to do will be backlogged until I get back to school…
Tags: productivity