It’s a wonder anybody gets anything done these days. The distractions are just endless.

Whether it’s news alerts on your phone blaring headlines of somebody insignificant doing something that seems significant. Or, social gongs going off anytime a friend request comes in or a pseudo-acquaintance posts their latest #TBT to 16 years ago. Or, the endless stream of email that’s a full-time job to manage on its own.

Distractions can come at you from every direction today, and if you’re not focused and disciplined, they can actually become the norm and take up more of a given day than, you know, actual work.

I recently made a habitual change to try to tune some of this out. I turned off news alerts on my phone. I was beginning to care more about hearing the news first than one should reasonably be interested in. I simply decided that the latest tweet posted by the president or the hourly movement of the Dow Jones Industrial Average or the newest New York Mets player to land on the disabled list could wait until I heard about it some other way.

In a word, the change has been “freeing.” Sure, I now find out some news and information later in the day (sometimes the next day and sometimes not at all) than I would’ve previously. But the tradeoff is tremendous. I’m now more focused on things that matter during the day – work and productivity. It’s amazing – you don’t know how much the noise around you can actually be getting in your way until you actively get rid of some of that nonsense.

“Distractions can actually become the norm and take up more of a given day than, you know, actual work.”Andy Cohen

This isn’t for everybody. But we all have distractions that get in the way right now – and technology has made them more prevalent than ever. It’s imperative to tune them out somehow. Some people choose to close their inbox for certain times during the day. I’ve heard of others who actually lock their mobile devices in a drawer for hours on end so they’re not distracted by all that can be found there. And, others in business go on social media hiatuses regularly. Call it the cold-turkey act of the digital age, but you need to do something to reduce the clutter of information around you.

If not, you’re liable to be trapped by this constant stream of information (and in some cases misinformation). It has the capability to freeze somebody into inaction when what’s really most important today is action and the ability to be flexible.

The other thing that this flow of noise around you can do is create an inflexibility that’s unhealthy for business today. It’s critical to be hyper aware of changing market forces and customer needs, so that you and your company can shift quickly. If you’re too focused on the hourly changes of the stock market or the movement of the value of the dollar or the regular shifts in interest rates, you could easily miss the subtle messages that customers are regularly trying to tell you about how they want to be communicated with and how they want to buy.

You have to be able to act on these changing needs, not the updated information in the national news. That’s just noise right now – don’t allow yourself to be held hostage by it.

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