This is Steveer Robbins. Welcome to the Get It Done guys quick and dirty tips to work less and do more.

Europa, the secret ruler of the Eastern Bloc, decided that it was time for her yearly strategic planning session.

After all, she's been growing her empire since the 1980s, and these things do require maintenance.

She sits down, takes out her maps, positions the little meeples that she uses to represent world leaders on the map,

and hunkers down to plan the next step of her world domination.

Four hours later, she's responded to a dozen emails, participated in nine Facebook discussions,

browsed three websites of kittens doing the most outrageous things,

and read two chapters of Pirates versus Ninjas the shocking truth they never told you.

Horrifyingly, she even knocked over some of the meeples and didn't notice.

No matter how powerful you might be, distraction is even more powerful.

Distractions are chronic problem these days. They're like interruptions. Disractions are like

interruptions, but they come from inside of us, so they're much more insidious. When a minion comes

to your cubicle door and interrupts you, you can turn around, activate the sonic transducer,

and your handy-dandy audio-vibratory, physiomolecular transport device will simply send the minion away to

Antarctica where they can't bother you anymore. When a distraction comes from inside us, however,

there's no escape. Even our productivity tools are no help, because our technology was once

designed by people

who were trying to help us work better, but then they discovered that addicting and distracting

us was a much better way to make money, so now our tools themselves are designed to further

our distractions.

But there's one tool that can't, a pencil and paper.

We will use this to tame our distractions.

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