How many times have you experienced this? Just when you’re in the middle of finishing a paper, your phone calls with a crucial message. You promptly check and respond. You then feel it’s worthwhile to check your email as well since you’re there while trying to find ways to avoid interruptions. You may then fit in a brief glance at your social media accounts.
You have been productive this morning, after all! It’s definitely time for a little break. Before you know it, fifteen minutes have gone by. Additionally, you have forgotten your previous concept by the time you go back to your paper. You need an additional fifteen minutes to refocus and give it your all concentration. The whole expense of the little message is just thirty minutes.
Distractions of this kind are expensive and time-consuming. Furthermore, there are more reasons than ever to go off course, whether you’re working from home due to the epidemic or readjusting to an office setting. It is your responsibility to remain focused. Setting limits between you and possible critics is a component of it. These are some suggestions for preventing disruptions at work.
Tips To Avoid Distractions At The Workplace
1. Engage in Asynchronous Communication
As one of the ways to avoid interruptions, it’s OK to think, “I’ll get to this when it suits me,” when you get an email. In addition to providing more time for unbroken concentration, asynchronous communication encourages improved decision-making by extending the time allotted for answering a request. While you have more time to consider your answer while speaking via email, you are making choices in real-time when on a phone conversation or video chat.
To successfully implement this, we need to eliminate the arbitrary “urgency” that still permeates workplaces around the globe, nearly a century after Dwight D. Eisenhower remarked, “I have two kinds of problems: the urgent and the important,” about Dr. J. Roscoe Miller. The important are never urgent, and the urgent are not significant. He claimed to have prioritized his workload using this “Eisenhower Principle.”
Add the following to your original request to maximize an asynchronous message and prevent a lot of follow-up emails:
- Enough information.
- Clearly define the action item or items.
- A deadline.
- A line of action if the receiver cannot fulfill your demands.
2. Keep A Log Of Distractions
By maintaining an interrupters log, you may document the disruptions you encounter daily, examine any trends, and then determine the most effective way to deal with these disruptions. Maintain your interrupters log daily for a minimum of seven days. Make a note of every disruption you encounter and write down the following:
- The one who cut you off.
- The time and date of the incident.
- What was the disruption?
- Was it legitimate?
- Whether it was necessary or if there was a better time to do it.
By maintaining the journal, you may better understand the disruptions you encounter each day, take action to reduce them, and control your reactions.
3. Check Everything In Batches
Over a day, “just quickly checking” anything, even for a tenth of a second, may result in a 40% loss in productivity, and it can take us 23 minutes to regain focus after switching tasks. We should check social media, email, instant communications, and even text messages in bulk at set intervals rather than intermittently throughout the day.
If you have trouble controlling yourself or finding answers to how to avoid interruptions, you may stop your inbox after checking it and only unpause it when you’re ready using tools like Gmail’s Inbox Stop plugin. You may also restrict access to certain websites and applications for predetermined periods using various apps.
4. Organize Regular Meetings
Regular meetings allow you to anticipate numerous disruptions. People will learn to put off non-urgent matters till you meet if they are aware that they will soon have access to you. Additionally, you should set up frequent check-in times for the folks you interact with the most.
Request that they maintain a running list of the topics they need to talk about and follow suit. By soliciting feedback from coworkers, you may demonstrate that you respect their viewpoints and are able to address problems and concepts in a single, concentrated meeting.
5. Put Your Phone In Flight Mode
As one of the ways to avoid interruptions, you may activate airplane mode to reduce the number of interruptions from phone calls and texts during certain hours of the day.
You may always exclude some numbers, such as those of loved ones or significant and valuable business colleagues, if the thought of doing this makes you nervous. On an iPhone, you may put it in “Do Not Disturb” mode, which will silence other calls and texts while letting your “favorite” contacts through.
6. Make a Contingency Time Reservation
You may check how much time is spent on legitimate, urgent interruptions by looking at your interrupters log. Schedule this period as “contingency time,” and use the remaining time for as few other tasks as possible.
Maybe you saw in your interrupter’s log that essential deliveries often came in the early afternoon or that a lot of your customers called you in the morning. You won’t be overburdened and stressed out by the things preventing you from completing duties if you schedule this as contingency time.
7. Use “Available” and “Unavailable” Times
Informing others of your availability and inaccessibility is a simple but powerful answer to how to avoid interruptions. Decide on a signal to utilize when you’re not accessible, such as putting on headphones at work or making “Busy” the status of your direct message (DM) app. This eliminates disruptions without causing resentment.
In your shared calendar, note down your “unavailable time” and keep to it. Complex chores may be completed more easily if you schedule an hour when you are most productive. Or take a 30-minute break from your work to unplug. For further tips on creating your own space, see our post Managing Your Boundaries.
But be careful not to misuse “unavailable time,” and let people know that they may interrupt you if they have to. Communication is particularly crucial for distant workers who could experience feelings of loneliness.
8. Learn To Say ‘No’
You have the option to decline a job or request if you’re too busy. Or at least request an extension of the deadline. When you want to be a team player, it’s easy to say “yes” to everything. However, you only harm yourself and your team in the long term if you exhibit burnout signs. Acquire the ability to say no.
9. Set Your Boundaries
There will always be some diversions. However, when they do occur, be careful to establish ground rules for the discussion:
- Ask if you can talk about it later and politely explain that you’re busy.
- If not, establish guidelines for the discussion and follow them. “I only have five minutes to talk about this right now,” for instance.
- Consider whether you are the most qualified individual to handle this problem or inquiry. If not, politely direct them elsewhere.
- Set up a follow-up meeting and ask them to prepare their questions if you are unable to get to an agreement in five minutes. Hopefully, they’ll fix their problem before you meet.
How To Get Back On Track After Being Distracted
Don’t be hard on yourself if you can’t find ways to avoid interruptions at work; they’re a common occurrence. The secret is to recover fast in order to minimize time loss. Here’s how to reduce the amount of time you lose because of interruptions.
Write down your last thought: When someone draws you away from a paper you’re working on, jot down your thoughts right away. You may continue where you left off with a straightforward list of thoughts and next tasks in bullet points.
Read your writing again: Restoring your pre-interrupt attitude might be facilitated by going over your previous actions.
Take a stroll: Take a break if you are unable to refocus right away. Get up, go around, and enjoy some fresh air or coffee. You’ll feel refreshed and be able to concentrate better.
Treat yourself with kindness: Don’t feel terrible if you didn’t complete the day’s most critical job since responding to interruptions counts as productive.
Put a timer on: See how much you can do in the allotted fifteen minutes. Likely, you will easily ignore your alert. After that amount of time, however, if you’re still not focused, take a five-minute break and try again. These productivity spikes will eventually help you get back into the zone.
Take it easy at first: Format your document, change the headers, and color your spreadsheet’s cells. You can get back into the process with these little inputs. You may as well start now, as you will ultimately have to complete them.
FAQ
Q: Why should interruptions be minimized?
A: According to research, it may take an average of almost 25 minutes to restart work after being stopped, and repeated interruptions can double mistake rates, cause fatigue, and raise stress.
Q: After an interruption, how long does it take to recover?
A: It returns to the work after an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds. Losing that momentum is not only annoying, but it may also negatively affect how well you perform at work. Fortunately, there are several methods for teaching oneself to get back on course after losing concentration.
Q: Does the quality of work suffer from interruptions?
A: Regular disruptions might result in more mistakes, stress-related illnesses, and greater rates of fatigue.
