What kind of interruption or distraction is more costly to your time, focus and progress: receiving a call, an email notification, or an unexpected visitor? Or hearing noise in general?
Surprisingly, the answer is “none of the above.”
That’s because NONE of these are problematic when you understand how to manage them or better yet, how to reduce, avoid or prevent them altogether.
Whether you’re working from home or working at an office—or a little of both—interruptions and distractions will eat away at your efficiency and productivity if you let them, believing you’re hopelessly at their mercy and giving them the power to succeed over your intentions to make progress.
Ultimately, however, you have choices when you want to take control of managing your work and your workday. And you have more power than you think.
Progress is the Name of the Game
You face several costly challenges when your focus is interrupted or you become distracted.
The first challenge is being prepared to deal with either one of these. If your intention isn’t strong enough to focus on a task and finish it, you can easily be pulled away. Tony Schwartz, author of The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working, says, “It’s the capacity to keep […] distractions at bay, even under fierce pressure, that helps set [great performers] apart from less skilled practitioners.”
The second challenge is handling the interruption or distraction itself. If it’s not managed well, you’ll not only lose time and concentration, but depending on how long you’re pulled away from your work, you can lose a LOT of time trying to get refocused when you return to the task at hand. It’s a costly double whammy: the longer you step away, the longer it will take to regain focus.
The third challenge is how to handle the task you were working on and what to do if turn away from it because of an interruption or distraction. Your ability to keep track of things—including the task you were working on before you got interrupted PLUS any NEW tasks resulting from the interruption or distraction—is essential for staying in control of your work and making steady progress, both today and in the future.
The Power of Temptation
Let’s talk about food. “What’s more damaging to your weight loss efforts: brownies, chips or ice cream?” Well, none of the above if you REMOVE them from your kitchen, right? It’s only when you have them available that they invite temptation. Then it’s a question of how to manage the temptation, including the engagement of willpower, the strength of your health intentions, and your power of choice.
When you’re at work and you are interrupted, the situation can go downhill quickly if you are not prepared. Reactivity will emerge and your reaction may be to follow a new path, which is really easy to do, because hey, you’ve already broken your train of thought! Your focus is out the window.
Let’s say you get a phone call. Which do you prefer: picking up the call and risk losing your focus and progress or letting it go to voice mail and getting the message later so you can continue to work on the task in front of you?
An audience member once voiced his preference to ALWAYS pick up the phone when it rings instead of letting it go to voice mail. He never wanted to deal with any possible phone tag later on. For him, the temptation was too great, and he continuously lived out an Oscar Wilde quote perfectly, albeit unfortunately: “The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.” Uh-oh.
But here’s the deal. When you yield to interruptions and distractions ALL of the time, you are making it that much harder on yourself to be productive and to make progress every day. Getting things done will go as fast as slogging through molasses.
If, however, it really matters that you finish what you start and get tasks and projects accomplished, you don’t have to take chances with your time and concentration, or your productivity and progress.
Six Steps to Prevent Interruptions and Distractions
Experts say it’s easier to AVOID temptation than it is to resist it. That means it’s easier to set boundaries up front to protect your time from being interrupted so you and your productivity won’t be at risk. This is like removing the chips and the brownies from your kitchen.
According to Roy Baumeister, author of Willpower, “…people with good self-control avoid temptations and problem situations, rather than battling with them.”
Take control by taking these six steps to prevent or avoid interruptions and distractions so you can work more efficiently, effectively and productively. Then you can guard your time, protect your focus, finish what you start, and keep your progress steadily moving forward.
- Establish a routine in your workday that supports you. If you’re working at home more often than in an office, establish a schedule, but leave room for flexibility. Be able to swap out different targets at different times, given that things can change suddenly in your day. Decide when to have your meals, when to work-out or get some exercise, and when to focus on your work. There are MANY other considerations, of course, for spouses and children who may also be at home, but no matter what you do, be sure to identify the best times of day to address each target or responsibility, and leave room for flexibility.
- Schedule a blocks of “office time” on your calendar for every morning and every afternoon to protect time from being gobbled up by business calls and zoom meetings. If you book back-to-back meetings and calls all day, you’ll never get any of your own work done and you’ll never be able to keep up with email. Protected time should be at least an hour in the morning and at least an hour in the afternoon, recurring, with no end date. You’ll be able to move individual blocks around on your calendar later to accommodate requests on your time.
- Find a quiet space in which to work. If you have an office at work with a door you can close, that’s ideal. If your desk is in a noisy office space and you need quiet, remove yourself and find another space where you can better concentrate, such as in an empty meeting room or conference room. At home, find an empty space or room if you don’t have a designated office. Establish invisible boundaries for your “office” space and set expectations with others to respect those boundaries.
- Shield your protected “office time” on the calendar by closing your office door for that period of time. Close your door for the time you protect on your calendar as “office time” so you can work without interruption. If you don’t have an office at work or at home, or you don’t have a door to close, create another sign or signal that you need quiet time to work, which lets others know not to disturb you and/or to maintain quiet for a period of time.
- Set intentions for the work you want to accomplish. This is where the Taskology® Task List helps, because having a centralized, digital task management system supports you with planning and prioritizing so you already know what you’re going to work on, even before the day begins. This is a HUGE time-saver so you can dive into work right away without having to think about what you need to do or remember what didn’t get accomplished from yesterday. When you know what you’re going to work on, set an intention to accomplish a certain amount of progress in a certain amount of time, no matter how big or small the accomplishment for a particular task or project.
- Decide ahead of time how you will handle interruptions if they DO occur—and they will! Decide ahead of time NOT to look at email or answer calls or texts unless you’re expecting an urgent or emergency message. Decide whether or not you’ll answer a knock on your office door. Of course, this last one becomes a bit harder to do at work if you have a window next to your door and people can see you.
When you practice these steps to protect your time and focus, your chances of keeping both go way up, as does your likelihood of finishing tasks.
Commit to a target of accomplishment every morning and every afternoon, and shield yourself from interruptions and distractions as best as you can. Avoid spending energy resisting temptation by removing yourself from noisy environments. Otherwise, be sure to use routines, schedules and good communication to reduce or eliminate as many disturbances as possible.
As a result, you’ll be far less apt to let interruptions and distractions lead you astray. You’ll be happier and more satisfied when you can accomplish targeted tasks for the day. Stress will drop as efficiency and productivity go up, and your progress will be more consistent and evident on tasks, projects and goals.
