Ways to Stop Interrupting Your Lineup

Work Interrupted: 6 Ways To Avoid Distractions is an extremely practical article by Caroline Potter. In it she highlights 6 suggestions from the Center for Creative Leadership on staying focused. They are:

• If you have a door, shut it. If you don't have a door, consider putting in earphones when you really need to focus (no music required). Don't make eye contact with co-workers when they pass by your work area.
• Budget your time. Even your free time. Making a well-thought out schedule (lineup) that includes both work and non-work items will help you better understand how your time was used and keep you on track.
• Put down your mobile device. Or at least turn it off for defined periods of time so you can better focus on other tasks.
• Consider a change of scenery. If your current work location is wrought with interruptions, find a place where you can better focus. It might be at home, in a conference room or even a vacant office.
• Stop incessantly checking your e mail.
• Off hours are in. Early mornings, late afternoons or even weekends might be a time to catch up on those high mental tasks that just never seem to get done. (Juggling Elephants note-you will need to find a way to maintain those quality acts in your relationship or self rings if you start using your off hours for your "work ring.")

Turn Right Into A Better Lineup

Turning right instead of left. It might not seem like a big idea, but for UPS, it saves about 3 million gallons of fuel per year, as the software used to calculate their routes sets routes up with mostly right turns. Limiting left turns also increases the time efficiency of their routes because so often when you are turning left, you have to wait for a light to turn green or until traffic allows you the opportunity to make the turn. You can see the live report by clicking here. Need more proof of the value of this strategy? According to UPS officials, they would need an additional 1000 trucks to complete the routes without the calculated, efficient routing. WOW!

After hearing of UPS' great find, I started thinking about my own daily "lineup." What "left turns" do I need to limit in order to be more productive with my day? Here are a few that come to mind:

• Turn off my e mail notifications or close my e mail program so I can better focus on a high mental tasks without being interrupted.
• Move to a less interruption prone area to better focus on key tasks.
• Move the tasks I really like to do to later in the day, making them a reward for getting the less enjoyable tasks done.
• Educate family and friends about my work schedule and that I will check voice mail and e mail at 9 AM, Noon, 3 PM and before leaving the office.
• Insure that my employees have the resources they need to make as many decisions as possible on their own and minimize their need to get my approval for minor decisions.

While these ideas may not give me a monumental amount of increased productivity on a daily basis, over a year they could make a huge difference. Just ask UPS.

Turn the Bell Off!

This is a trap that I have found myself completely caught in. I am working on a project on my computer and all of a sudden I hear the familiar "dah duh, dah duh" of my email box announcing that I've got mail. Curious, I stop what I am doing and checkout what has just arrived. Or even worse, a little window pops up with, "Message from Wendy". I wonder, "What does Wendy have to say?". Fifteen minutes later I am finished responding to Wendy and a few other messages that have arrived. I am now totally derailed from what I have been doing on my project.

Email is a wonderful tool but it also can be a MAJOR interrupter and time waster. Try turning the bell and popup off. If email is critical to what you do at work, schedule a consistent time (like the top of the hour) to check email. Otherwise, fight the urge to check email too often-maybe only check it 2-3 times a day. You will be surprised how your focus will increase as well as your productivity.

The Cost of Not Paying Attention

While working on the Juggling Elephants "Train the Trainer" program, I came across a fantastic research abstract entitled The Cost of Not Paying Attention-How Interruptions Impact Knowledge Worker Productivity. Consider some of their findings:

-Unnecessary interruptions cost U.S. businesses $588 billion per year.

-Twenty-eight percent of a knowledge worker's productivity may be lost to unnecessary interruptions such as instant messaging, spam e-mail, telephone calls and the web.

The abstract offered three great solutions to minimize such losses. They were:

-Training knowledge workers to prioritize work at hand

-Providing them with discretion to turn off technology

-Separating themselves from technology to do work