Recent Basex studies reveal that the average worker who spends their day behind a desk loses 2.1 hours of day of productive time to interruptions. Intel places a value of approximately $1 billion per year on the cost of email interruptions to Fortune 500 companies. Staggering numbers. Especially for technology that we all thought was there to help us work more efficiently. Here are the big issues with e-terruptions and some suggested solutions:
1. Techno-addiction is real. Bottom line, folks... there are a lot of you out there who don't run your technology - it runs you. Turning off your Blackberry and closing out of Outlook for 2 hours while you focus on an drafting an important document is unthinkable. Every 10 minutes during the day you check your emails, your IMs, your social networking accounts, etc. and you can't stop. But look at it this way, if you check messages every 5 minutes that equals 96 interruptions in an average work day. No wonder you can't think!
Stress management experts confirm that most managers are driven crazy by the constant barrage of messages and questions to the point that they can't perform their real job: leading people and making decisions. Compulsive message checking is not the behavior of a highly productive worker. It's the sad reality of a techno-addict. Seek help before it's too late!
Solution: Set times throughout the day to check your phone messages, your emails, your texts and your social media accounts. Otherwise... turn it off! It will be really tough at first (like quitting smoking), but you'll find you get twice as much done in half the time.
2. Multi-tasking is a lie. Honestly, as much as we revere multi-tasking people aren't very good at it. Our brains just are not made to handle multi-tasking of similar functions. It's like this... you can probably chop carrots in the kitchen and have a coherent conversation on your cell phone - one is a mundane physical task and the other engages the language part of the cognitive brain. The problem kicks in when you're trying to do multiple things that engage the same brain areas. Imagine a narrow path through the woods where three people cannot walk abreast - they have to slow down and take their turn - and they lose speed in the process. If you're reading an email, listening to a voice mail and trying to engage in a conversation with a co-worker walking by, you experience a 'switching cost' of probably 40% of your time and understanding due to the overload. People are optimally productive when they can focus on complex tasks and complete them without interruptions.
Solution: Stop trying to multi-task. Let go of the cachet of doing multiple things all at the same time. If you're on a conference call, don't try to answer emails in the background. If you're writing a report, just let the phone ring. Prioritize your day, doing one thing at a time and giving it your full attention.
3. Minor interruptions don't hurt productivity. Constant interruptions are not OK and most workplaces inadvertently foster an environment of incessant bombardment. University of Minnesota researchers recently found that 'peripheral tasks' (AKA interruptions) triggered twice the errors, up to 106% of the annoyance, and up to 27% of the time that a task would take without interruptions. Then, even worse, it took the worker 15 minutes to get back in the groove and re-focus on the original duty. Our brains get so scrambled by bouncing from one point of focus to the next that we can't do anything well and we're frustrated to boot. In some fields people are even losing their ability to engage in stimulating conversations and face-to-face interactions!
Solution: Implement times when you are 'OFF' and time when you are 'ON'. It's not a bad thing for your co-workers to learn that from 9-12:00 each day your office door will be closed, your voice mail will be on, and you won't answer to anything but an emergency. I guarantee that those will be your 3 most highly productive hours of the day.
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