Managing Distractions For Better Time Management

In a year each of us will have the same 365 days to advance our dreams, but many of us will be interrupted in the normal flow of our work to such an extent that the time lost to these interruptions will reach – or exceed – the equivalent of 30 days of our life.

If you would like to cut your losses to the minimum when it comes to interruptions, then develop a simple process for managing what has become in our age of instant communication, an increasing flood of low priority contacts.

The average office worker suffers around 2 hours of distractions every working day in the form of emails, phone calls, technical glitches, errors, drop-bys (co-workers, reps, canvassers) and a host of others.

A study by the London Institute of Psychiatry found constant disruption from emails and phone calls had a greater negative effect on IQ than smoking marijuana or drinking alcohol.

It seems that once our attention span is disrupted, it takes us time to regain our previous train of thought and, if you are interrupted again while trying to remember what it was you were meant to be doing, you might as well call it quits!

A University of California study found that more than 20 percent of interrupted tasks were not resumed the same day – probably for that last reason!

Decision point: Do nothing different this year, and continue to be prey to distractions and interruptions; or adopt some simple and effective processes for minimising their impact on you.

Nine Ways to Cut Distractions

1. Set goals; write them out; place them in plain view of your work position. Refer to them often, especially when recovering from an interruption!
2. Learn to distinguish between that which is immediate (emails, phone calls) and that which is urgent (crises, hot opportunities, good long term planning, sales) – then focus on the ‘urgents’ and manage the ‘immediates’ at a time of your choosing.
3. (I loved this one!) Cut two centimetres off the front legs of your Client chairs. It’s not noticeable, but makes them just uncomfortable enough to keep visits short!
4. Always stand to talk to someone who has interrupted you. They won’t get comfortable and settle in for a chat, and you are signalling that this is an interruption.
5. Split the Hour. Gain an agreement with work colleagues that you are not available for the first or second half of each hour, and ask them to record calls and contacts that occur in “your” half hour. When your half hour is up, look over and prioritise the cued tasks, and handle them in priority order. No one will wait long for your attention, but you will have 8 uninterrupted half hours in which to chisel away at your “real tasks”.
6. Particularly in open-plan offices, face your desk away from the flow of people, so no one can catch your eye.
7. Put a clock in plain view of visitors and check it while you are talking. Even done subtly, this will have the subconscious effect of moving people on.
8. If an interruption is likely to take longer than two minutes, add it to your Daily Task Sheet, give it a priority relative to your other tasks – inform the interrupter of where it sits in the pile – and return to the task at hand.
9. Work from your Daily Task Sheet to keep an overall track of where you are up to. When interrupted, develop the habit of jotting down what you were doing as soon as you are interrupted and before beginning your response.