Useful distractions

In today's #ldinsight chat, responding to the question of what is the one thing we'd do to make us even better at what we do, I said 'hone ability to distinguish between useful and useless distractions.' Of course, I was then asked to give examples of useful distractions. Whilst the temptation, at the end of the week is to have a lovely rant, in my comfortable space, about useless distractions, throwing in loads of examples we can all recognise and roll our eyes over, I'm having a go at describing useful distractions.

Off the top of my head, I think this depends on:

Personality
How important what we are currently doing is
How we are feeling at the time, and what's going on around us

Firstly, I think a lot depends on our personality. I am a self confessed lover of MBTI, and other similar tools, as long as these are used in the right context, proportionately and in an environment of discovery, challenge and growth - not putting people into boxes. So what follows is the view of someone with extroverted feeling and introverted intuition. As such, I generally quite like distractions, in the form of social interactions - my worst day in the office is sitting by myself writing a document with absolutely no one to talk to or share any ideas with or seek any ideas from. I was recently the subject of an Insights Discovery profile, and my feedback included the tendency to go off at tangents. I showed this to a trusted close former colleague, who roared with laughter, recognising this instantly (and in truth, so did I). I've just done it here, but my point is to demonstrate why it is necessary for me to be able to recognise useful distractions from the other sort... Generally a useful distraction for me will be a social interaction from a trusted, valued and ideally liked person, who ignites me to start making links, connections and patterns which help me to progress my thinking on what needs to be done.

Next, how busy are we? How important is the work? What is the deadline? So, if I am sitting in that darkened room on my own, writing something important for the organisation with a very pressing deadline to meet, maybe even I won't find distractions useful, unless they really do add value to the piece of work in hand.

I also think the usefulness of distractions can depend very much on how we are feeling and the situation around us. Sometimes, when feeling a bit despondent, flat or tired, an unexpected pleasant distraction from the world around me can be just what I need to feel reenergised and enthused. Equally, when feeling enthusiastic and motivated, certain distractions can be useful for me for checks and balances, reframing and maintaining the right level of momentum.

I have also been reflecting on who the 'useful distraction' may benefit. Us personally? Our teams or organisations? Ideally all 3? Also, do we realise at the time, how useful this is:

For personal development, new thoughts and perspectives?
For moving off a negative or mundane track?
For a necessary break from the task in hand, to return to it later, refreshed?

And finally, what kind of useful distraction was a thinking about? Well, I think it's pretty obvious that my musings here are mainly the distractions caused by unplanned or casual social interactions. But I will add to this the delights of distractions that invade the sensations such as catching something interesting going on through the window, or smelling the coffee.

So this has been a bit of a self indulgent look at the positives of useful distractions. What do you think?

Post-script. No pictures because a quick google image search for 'distraction' showed up only the negative aspects of useless distractions...