The corporate world is full of distractions. Many companies go to great lengths to provide workers with the tools, culture and environment to work productively, but workers still form habits that are killing their productivity. Texting, social media and email provide a constant stream of distractions. According to Challenger, Gray and Christmas, employees participating in March Madness (the NCAA basketball tournament)—between filling out brackets and watching games online—could cost a total loss of productivity approaching $4 billion.

How can leaders deal with workplace distractions effectively? How do individuals avoid interruptions and stay focused?

Entrepreneurs, CEOs and leaders in every industry look for ways to improve productivity because they know it will improve their bottom line. They balance between positive incentives such as longer lunch breaks, and disincentives such as email monitoring.

A recent CareerBuilder survey of 2175 HR managers found there are many things that distract employees at work. The survey uncovered things company leaders can do to improve morale and focus. Among the top discoveries were scheduling lunch breaks, limiting meetings (I love this one!) and allowing employees to telecommute. Other innovations, such as creating an open space layout (instead of cubicles), also improve productivity.

What if you had specific tools to help employees (or you yourself) step up and become leaders? What if they led their own lives, led others, and their productivity went up significantly?

Looking forward

Helping workers become leaders is my passion and I’m working on new platform to help you focus on the key areas that will skyrocket your productivity and help your employees do the same. Over the next few months you will start to see changes at Lead on Purpose. The first step will be a reader survey to help me understand why you come and what’s valuable to you.

You can rise above the distractions that drag you down and sap your productivity. Together we can become great leaders. I appreciate your participation and look forward to taking a new journey together.

Question: How do you stay on task? What area of your work would you most want to improve? You can leave a comment in the space below.

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The Product Management Perspective: Product managers work with people from many different teams. Because they all have their own schedules, PMs can easily get distracted by all the moving parts. If you find yourself getting distracted, try this: focus on one task at a time and complete that task. Then move to the next one, get it done, and keep going. You’ll find yourself getting things done much more quickly.