Steven Robbins here. Welcome to the Get It Done Guy's quick and dirty tips to work less and do more.

Today's topic is staying on task when we get distracted. The quick and dirty tip is to use external

reminders to stay on task. Natalie writes,

Dear, get it done, guy, I need help.

Every time I try to do something,

I get distracted and then forget the task I should have been doing.

Do you have any tips on dealing with distractions?

Do I have tips on dealing with distractions?

Of course.

The very question itself reminds me of that time in third grade.

I was playing with the yellow silly putty,

and Leslie Goldstein was playing with a red hammer.

Well, of course, even then,

I realized that yellow and red would make a great clothing combination.

So I went straight over to the finger paint, grabbed some library paste, yum, tasty,

and headed towards Leslie with a single-minded determination.

Oh, um, where was I?

Distractions, right.

It's easy to get distracted.

Humans are built that way. We have built-in distractions

called daydreams. We'll be sitting in math class, and the instant the teacher writes an

equation on the board, wham! We're sitting on a desert island, sipping fruit-flavored beverages,

...