Everyone Needs One Untouchable Day

According to the Canadian author and entrepreneur Neil Pasricha, we spend 31% of our day in our brains bookmarking, prioritizing and switching.

What does it mean? That when you get a text, a notification, someone calls you up, or people tap you on the shoulder, they interrupt you. Your brain is busy always deciding which piece of information is more important. In fact, you're spending 30% of your day doing that.

The New York Times best-selling author proposes setting one untouchable day a week. This is a day where you are in airplane mode on your phone, you have Wi-Fi disabled on your laptop, and no one contacts you in any way, all day, one time a week. No one can reach you.

Pasricha puts himself as an example. On a typical day, he only can write about 500 words, while on his untouchable day, he can often write 5000 words, getting a 10x productivity improvement just by telling the whole world to doesn't bother him for one day.

If you chose an untouchable day every week, you would be able to focus on one deep task.

What do you do if it's an emergency and you have to be able to be reachable by someone? Tell a person you trust or live with where you will be working, what phone number is there, and where they can reach you in an emergency.

If you are a busy parent, it's okay if you only book half a day a week as an untouchable day. You don't need to work during these hours necessarily. For example, Pasricha's wife takes the giant photo album that she's been wanting to put together for three years about when their kid was born, and she spends a half-day at a coffee shop just putting it together.

Also read: How to Increase Your Productivity Working From Home

After doing an activity that you enjoy and is meaningful to you, you will come home feeling so energized because no one interrupted you. So here is the secret to improve your productivity: get a big task done on your untouchable day.

When you create that deep silence, your productivity skyrockets, and everybody will feel great before and after. In fact, you will start looking forward to these days.

You have to make sure that the activity that you're doing is not on your phone or computer. But if it is, you've disabled anything that can distract you.

If it's not easy for you to concentrate, the expert highlights that it is not your fault your brain gets hijacked because everything is designed to be addictive.

"Your phone must be in airplane mode," the author suggests. In a few words, you have to go away from your world and unplug yourself, so you create a deep silence, an untouchable day in which you can actually get work done.

"If you are really paranoid about the concept, just try it for half a day, but I guarantee you this is a huge enabler to productivity and long-term success," he assures.