Build in "Planned Interruptions" to Work with Ease

In April I discussed Time Management and how you can begin to manage time with ease. In order to continue with this process, it's important to take all aspects of your day into consideration. Interruptions are a part of a typical work day for many of us. One of the keys to effective time management is to find a way to plan interruptions into your day so you can anticipate the unexpected! Through the rest of May I will focus on Interruptions. I will start with introducing interruptions and how you can plan for them. I will close the month with a discussion on how you can Manage Interruptions in your day.

In the course of a typical workday, each person gets interrupted about every three minutes (with an average of 20 times per hour). This equates to 160-200 interruptions per day. Yikes! Is it any wonder, then, that people often leave work feeling like they've accomplished nothing? In some cases, that's exactly what happens, as the day is filled with interruptions and little focused time.

Interruptions pull you out of your current focus (i.e. email, report, project or workflow) and into someone else's world. This "pull"sometimes comes in the form of a friendly
request such as "Can I have just a few minutes of your time," or perhaps a hasty demand such as "I need your help with something." Either way, it's generally unproductive work
behavior that actually creates inefficiency for both parties.

Research from Dr. Gloria Mark of the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California in Irvine, indicates that it takes anywhere between 6 and 20 minutes to recover and refocus after you are interrupted. So, not only are you using up time during the actual interruption, you are also expending additional time to "get back on track" with the work you were doing prior to being interrupted. The brain requires cycle time to process the data needed to handle the interruption, track back to the original task, remember what the original goal was, then move towards completion of that task. While you might find yourself saying, "Oh no, I'm actually great at handling interruptions and multi-tasking…it doesn't really bother me," chances are you find yourself exhausted at the end of the day from the mental exhaustion of interrupt-driven environments.

Rather than feeling you are at the mercy of continual interruptions, you may want to consider restructuring your time at work to maximize your productivity and sense of ease.
You can begin that process by identifying times for "planned interruptions" in which all of the small interruptions that would normally happen throughout the day are fit into buckets of time. By structuring this time two or three spots during the day, you begin to create more focus, structure and management of your time. This not only protects your max productivity time but also encourages others to better manage themselves throughout the day. The simple act of declaring your desire to reduce interruptions works magic - you get more disciplined at work, others group their questions prior to approaching you and, most importantly, you save time and energy at work.

Next week I will tell you about a client of mine that needed to plan interruptions in his day and how we identifed ways for doing this. I will also give you some tips on how you can do it too!