Scheduling interruptions
Interruptions are a common feature of our daily working lives with some roles more prone to interruptive activity than others.
To interrupt means to break continuity and it’s the experience of ongoing interruptions that breaks focus; causing us to work longer while achieving less and increasing errors - all of which drive stress levels up.
In my coaching work in helping people break this cycle to get back high-value concentrated time, I recommend deliberately “scheduling” interruptions. It’s seemingly counter-intuitive, but has significantly helped many of my clients reduce overwhelm and improve effectiveness. While some interruptions by their nature can’t be controlled, many can be. The top three interruptions to target for scheduling are:
Messages - email, SMS, and so forth.
Phone calls - both incoming and call-backs.
Colleagues spontaneously speaking to us or asking questions.
How to schedule
Set times of the day to check our emails and messages and respond ONLY in that time allocation. Depending on your role, you may need support with this one. For example, an auto-reply email letting people know you only check/respond to emails according to a schedule, could help reset the expectations of those who email you.
For phone messages, it may mean turning off alerts and notifications except for during allocated times. It may also mean scheduling time in the diary to dedicate to the callbacks that you know will require more time than your call-back window will allow. When allocating time in the diary for a call, make sure you invite the other person, so that the call has a valid place in both your schedules.
When it comes to colleagues or people we manage, it’s about having pre-allocated times of the day/week/month when they know we are open for ad-hoc conversation vs other meeting times for addressing routine business. Unless the house is burning down and it’s urgent, all non-urgent communication is otherwise scheduled.
Open office plans have extra challenges and you can read a previous post that mentions it here.
We have become habituated to living with interruptions and the personal cost is high: Earlier start times, extra hours at the end of the day, more stress, less sleep and poor mood. Interruptions can feel inescapable, but scheduling the most common interruptions goes a long way to shortening the work day and increasing productivity.
If you need some assistance with managing your time, tasks, and interruptions, please reply to this email or call me on +61 403 341 105
Ray
Something that others find useful to analyse their interruptions is the Time Analysis worksheet that can be found under the templates and tools section here.
ray@rayhodge.com.au; www.rayhodge.com.au; +61 403 341 105
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*edited by Michelle Sexton
*Photo by Viktoria Goda: https://www.pexels.com/photo/blue-red-and-yellow-chalk-1107495/