Don't Pardon the Interruption
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.
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