Five
Ways to Reduce Work Distractions
By Vistage
Speaker Daniel Markovitz
The main symptom of
cogitus interruptus
should sound familiar: an inability to complete a thought or a task without
losing focus due to relentless interruptions. It steals time executives
normally devote to solving problems and thinking strategically and, if left
untreated, drains productivity – and quickly.
But there’s hope for
sufferers: five techniques to help you find some quiet time to think.
The real
cost of interruptions
In order to overcome an annoying level of attention deficiency, it’s
important to understand to what extent interruptions now define our work
days.
Technology research
firm Basex in 2005 surveyed more than 1,000 employees and found that
knowledge workers lose about two hours per day due to unnecessary
interruptions such as instant messaging, spam and phone calls. That same
year University of California, Irvine researcher Gloria Mark studied workers
for about 1,000 hours and discovered each employee statistically spent only
11 minutes on any given project before being interrupted. Moreover, it took
25 minutes on average to return to that task.
It appears little
has changed in that time. A recent Vistage View mini-poll indicates 42
percent of those who took the survey typically spend less than 15 minutes on
a task before being interrupted, while another 46 percent manage up to 30
minutes before getting off track. Only a slim 9 percent get up to an hour’s
worth of stoppage-free work, and an even slimmer 4 percent average more than
that.
These interruptions
cost companies more than time. Mary Czerwinski, a computer scientist at
Microsoft Research Labs, found that 40 percent of the time workers wander
into another direction when an interruption ends, rather than stay on task.
Even when people
remember what they’re supposed to do, they’re less efficient in completing
those tasks. David E. Meyer, a cognitive scientist and director of the
Brain, Cognition and Action Laboratory at the University of Michigan, says,
“Multitasking is going to slow you down, increasing the chances of
mistakes. Disruptions and interruptions are a bad deal from the standpoint
of our ability to process information.”
A University of
Michigan and Federal Aviation Administration joint study found that people
who switch between different types of tasks – say, e-mail and spreadsheets
or drafting a contract and talking to a colleague – lose 20 to 40 percent of
their efficiency. Just as there’s a time loss during machinery changeover
on a production line, the human brain loses time in changing over from one
type of task to another. Peter Drucker saw this 40 years ago. In
The Effective Executive, he
wrote:
To
be effective, every knowledge worker, and especially every executive,
therefore needs to be able to dispose of time in fairly large chunks. To
have dribs and drabs of time at his disposal will not be sufficient even if
the total is an impressive number of hours.
Why you
can’t get 'in the flow'
On a less quantifiable – but no less important – note, steady interruptions
prevent executives from achieving what psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi
describes as the “flow” of work. He theorizes that people are happiest when
they’re in a state of flow (or “in the zone”), totally immersed in a task
that is fulfilling and intrinsically rewarding. One of the prerequisites
for getting in the “flow,” of course, is the ability to focus and
concentrate on the task at hand – which is impossible in an environment of
constant interruptions.
Talented, motivated
people yearn for uninterrupted periods of work when they can feel both
productive and fulfilled. I know the president of a mid-sized residential
construction firm who goes to the office every Saturday for three hours to
design new homes; only then can he find such a large block of time for his
work and “get in the groove.” Similarly, I've consulted partners at a large
law firm who regularly work at home during nights and weekends for the same
reason: it’s the only time when they “can get things done.”
Five ideas
to help you manage the chaos
So what’s the
solution? Here are specific actions you can take now to minimize
interruptions later:
1.
Group similar tasks into blocks of
activities in order to reduce the time lost to switchover.
Do your budgets, your phone calls, your drawing, your contract reviews,
etc., at one time rather than switching between them.
2.
Establish meeting “corridors”
– essentially office hours when you’re available to meet with colleagues.
During emergencies people can disturb you, but this will reduce the
non-urgent interruptions. A company I know has a totally open floor plan,
with low cube walls and no privacy. They've found a simple solution: each
person has two paper signs. A green sign says "open," which means they're
available to talk. A red sign has a time written on it – in other words, "do
not disturb until ___ o'clock." Also consider setting up standard check-in
periods during the day for the people with whom you interact the most: when
they know they’ll get to see you for 10 minutes each morning and afternoon,
they’ll be more willing to wait.
3. Set
“service level agreements” that support your work.
With e-mail in particular, there’s an assumption that because a message can
be sent and received immediately, it must be answered immediately. And, in
fact, we’ve trained people to expect instantaneous response. But more often
than not, people don’t really need an
immediate response. They
need a predictable
response – within a few hours or within the day. To address emergencies
effectively, set up a “white list” for certain people, and an e-mail rule
that notifies you when those people send you a message. Better yet, have
people use the phone for urgent issues. After all, if the issue is that
critical and time-sensitive, asynchronous communication tools are not the
best option.
4.
Turn off the automatic e-mail alerts in
Outlook and Lotus Notes to reduce distractions. Even if you
don’t respond to an e-mail immediately, the very act of reading (or hearing)
the alert fractures your concentration. Learn to deal with e-mail in blocks
– once or twice a day is ideal, four times a day if you must.
5. Set
Blackberry boundaries.
Just because you
can check your e-mail any
time and anywhere doesn’t mean that you
should. As with your desktop
e-mail, aim for predictable, not immediate, response. Set specific times at
which you check your Blackberry and communicate this schedule to your staff.
Making these changes can be disruptive, so it’s important to inform clients
and coworkers in advance. And while these new ways of working may seem odd
and cause friction at first, in the long run, they’ll make you – and your
team – more productive.
Daniel Markovitz
is president of TimeBack Management in Corte Madera, Calif. Contact him at
www.timebackmanagement.com.
Copyright © 2007
Vistage International, Inc.
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