Minimizing Interruptions To Maximize Productivity

Are you one of those people who sets their e-mail program to
check e-mail every 10 minutes throughout the day?

I was. It’s okay to admit it. You’re an information junkie. Each of us has different reasons why we check e-mail so frequently throughout the day. For some it may be because we don’t want to miss out on an urgent business e-mail. For others it may be because you’re providing support by e-mail and want to
provide a fast response time and excellent customer support.

Stop for a minute and think about what happens when you check e-mail every ten minutes. You’re working diligently on some project or task and every ten minutes you are interrupted by a pop-up “You’ve got mail” message, a bouncing icon in the system tray, or other alert.

Even though you don’t have to check to see what it is, there’s that nagging feeling that it might be something really
important. So you stop what you’re doing to investigate. If
it’s something important, you may even become sidetracked and start working on that new task before finishing what you were working on before being interrupted.

What ends up happening is that your day becomes a series of
starts and stops with frequent interruptions. You’re task
hopping, and while some of them may get completed, chances are you’re not working as efficiently or effectively as you could.

Research has shown time and time again the benefits of focusing and prioritizing what you are doing - whether it is offline or online work. Studies have shown the optimal situation is to work uninterrupted and focused for a period of 50 minutes and then take a ten minute break from the computer screen, rest, or do something different for a few minutes.

If you’re a person who checks e-mail every ten minutes, try this
strategy for the next two weeks and tell me how it works for
you:

Change your program settings so you’re checking e-mail just once every hour. It’ll be hard, but resist the urge to manually
check e-mail during that hour and use your program’s scheduler to help you manage your time. Work for a solid hour on something that is priority to you - that absolutely must be done today or there will be consequences. When you see your program checking e-mail, it’s time for a ten minute break. Make a phone call or two or do something to shift your focus briefly from what you are working on. If you didn’t finish it, come back to that task after your break.

The point is that (with the exception of a system admin
providing e-mail support) we all need to realize that the other
person is just as overloaded as we are with e-mail and
information. Nobody is going to send you an e-mail message and realistically expect that you’ll read it and respond to it in
less than an hour, so unless you’re a system admin there is no
true reason why you should need to check e-mail every few
minutes. All you’re doing is creating interruptions.
Responding within a two hour period of time - or even a day for that matter - is a better track record than 98% of the Fortune 100 companies have.

Use your time wisely on what matters most to you. Give yourself some quiet time to focus on what matters. Minimize your interruptions.

Put your phone on voice-mail and check messages only twice a day at designated times. Check e-mail less frequently. You’ll find that both e-mail and voice-mail messages will still be there when you check for them and you’ll be able to focus much better without interruptions.

Try this strategy for the next two weeks. If it doesn’t work for
you, go back to what you were doing before. If it does, drop me a note by e-mail to let me know how things turned out.

If you found this tip useful, forward it to a friend, client,
co-worker or your company’s internal mailing list so that others may benefit!

Reprinted with permission from Adam Boettiger’s Digital Ocean Newsletter.
(Copyright 2004, Adam Boettiger, DigitalOcean.cc.) To subscribe to Adam’s free
newsletter, visit his site here.