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How Do You Handle Distractions?

How do you handle distractions in the workplace?
I work 3 days per week. It means I’ve to set boundaries during busy times to get thru client work.
It means prioritising client/paid work first and ”going dark” for some hours during the day to get through what I need to get done.

When I go dark, I turn everything off. No phones, DND status on, no access to social media. Full focus and flow on the task at hand & I feel so happy & satisfied that I have actually created something & completed it. I can cross it off my list. I have achieved something big.
The downside, however, is that it becomes difficult for people to contact me. It may even be frustrating for them when my diary is blocked out. I’m available only when I’m ready to be available. In hindsight, that can be selfish too.
I’m grappling with this issue at the moment.
One way is to only block out my morning hours (when I’m most productive & creative) only. Use sparingly full day block outs if I can help it; seek out support on smaller tasks; ask to be excused out of meetings.
Other ways are if you can wangle flexibility is to change your work hours(I’m lucky I can). I can do some hours very early in the morning when others aren’t at work; get back online when they are – and be available – and then stop work earlier or work other hours in the day.
The reason I’m pontificating here is that this topic was a theme in a recent meeting of ours where our remote team were discussing ways to overcome this & still do our best work without being completely disconnected from colleagues. I think this is a common problem for many though.
A colleague also mentioned something I hadn’t thought about.
With many people working alone at home – isolated – if anything happens or if they need help or there’s an emergency- there is simply no way of knowing. This idea freaked me out. At least in an office, you’d get help.
I need to get a Panic Button.
I know some people give their aged parents, buttons that they press that sends a text to NOK or emergency services to be checked up on. I wouldn’t be surprised if future workers working from home would need this. (You heard this idea first from me)

This was a Twitter thread unrolled from the ThreadReader app found here:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1114259183078002689.html

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