PMP
Embracing Squirrels: How to Stay Focused, Manage Distractions, and Stop Fighting Your Own Brain
Bill Muskopf
Contributor
5 min read
Bill Muskopf
Contributor
5 min read
“The professionals who perform best over time are not the ones who never get distracted — they are the ones who have built honest, practical systems to work with their own brain instead of against it. Stop battling your squirrels. Embrace them, plan for them, and let them work for you.”
— Bill Muskopf — PMP®, MSPM, ITIL 4 Managing Professional | PassionIT Group
I’m sure many of you instantly pictured the talking dog from the movie Up, the animated comedy where a dog gets hilariously sidetracked mid-sentence by a passing rodent. We all have those moments when our focus completely swerves off track.
I, for one, have always struggled with staying focused. Reading just one book at a time? Impossible. Watching TV without constantly changing channels during commercials? My wife calls me a “fidgit,” and she’s not wrong. Relaxing isn’t relaxing for me, I’m constantly wrestling with my inner squirrels.
Over the years, I’ve moved past the frustration, through just managing these distractions, and now I sometimes even embrace them. Here’s how.
“Squirrel!” — capture it, schedule it, and get back to what matters.
This can be a simple notebook or a detailed spreadsheet. The key is to keep it close. When a squirrel jumps in your face, you capture it and move on, no lost momentum, no forgotten ideas.
The purpose of the list is not just task completion. It is cognitive offloading. When you write something down, your brain releases it from active worry, freeing you to return to your current task with less mental interference.
Use your phone alarm to create structured, distraction-free focus windows of 45–60 minutes. The alarm does the clock-watching so you don’t have to. Because the window is defined and planned, there is no need for self-distraction, you know exactly what comes next.
This is not a joke. Your brain needs genuine rest to perform. Not everyone can take a 20-minute power nap at home, but the principle applies everywhere:
The idea is to remove the anxiety of being distracted by these things by intentionally including them in your plan. They are no longer squirrels, they are scheduled events.
“The idea is not to eliminate distractions, it is to make them predictable. When enjoyable activities are on the calendar, they stop competing for your attention during work. Your brain knows they have a time and a place.”
— Bill Muskopf
Sometimes, the squirrels win. And that’s okay.
Have you ever read an entire page or even a chapter only to realize your mind was completely elsewhere? You were reading words, not absorbing meaning. When this happens, you have become too distracted to push through, and forcing it wastes more time than it saves.
The answer is not to give up. The answer is to pivot to another productive activity. This requires preparation. If you are studying for an exam and your mind starts to drift, switch to flashcards for a while, or research the topic online. Your to-do list guides these pivots, so you always have somewhere useful to go.
When Squirrels Take Over: Your Pivot Checklist
- If an action item pops into your head, jot it down on your to-do list immediately.
- If you want to call a friend, schedule it, give it a time box later in the day.
- If you need a nap, find a time box later when you can take one guilt-free.
- If you cannot focus on Task A, switch to a different task from your list and return later.
- Accept that multitasking will happen. Plan for it rather than fighting it.
The key insight is this: accept and embrace that you will be distracted and that you will multitask. The professionals who perform best are not the ones who never get distracted, they are the ones who have built systems to make distraction work for them.
Managing distraction is not about achieving some mythical state of perfect, uninterrupted focus. It is about building a practical, honest system that matches how your brain actually works.
Keep a to-do list. Set time boxes. Schedule your breaks. Plan your pivots. And when a squirrel appears, capture it, schedule it, and get back to what matters.
Embrace your squirrels. They are not your enemy. They are just part of how you work best.
Stop battling your squirrels and embrace them instead! 🐿
Contributor
Bill Muskopf is a certified PMP®, holds a Master of Science in Project Management (MSPM) from Boston University, and is an ITIL 4 Managing Professional and Agile practitioner with decades of experience in IT process improvement and service management. He is Chief Projects Officer at TuckerView Consulting and has delivered ITIL and project management training to teams across major financial institutions, government agencies, and technology organizations. Bill brings the same practical, no-nonsense approach to productivity that he brings to the classroom, honest, experience-tested, and immediately applicable.
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