How many times have you been distracted from your work on important activities and tasks by random ideas and thoughts?

These can be super-valuable ideas that you don’t want to lose but you also don’t want to be distracted from the task at hand! Robert Rodriguez (in Tribe of Mentors) calls these disruptive, yet potentially valuable ideas, Random Thought Missiles!

A Random Thought Missile can complete vaporize your focus on important tasks at hand. It can be disheartening when you block time in your calendar, shut off your phone, block out all electronic distractions, only to be interrupted and taken off track by these random thoughts.

Even as I sit down to write this post, my “deep work” thought process is constantly under attack by ideas for future posts, potential customer contacts, project delivery enhancements, and 100 other ideas. I cannot possibly investigate all these things and write the blog post at the same time!

So, what is the solution? How can you productively intercept and capture a Random Thought Missile without vaporizing your “deep work” focus  and without losing the value that the random thought may contain?