This is article #4, with a continued exploration of the 6 fundamentals of The Ascend Method™ This article provides a closer look at how best to eliminate distractions and interruptions.
Being a leader in today’s world comes with many challenges. Among those challenges is the never-ending request from employees, clients, family and friends for your time, input, and attention. Eliminating interruptions (and distractions) is a key fundamental from The ASCEND Method™ that ensures you are able to lead the growth and innovation you are most excited about as a leader, while continuing to meet the day to day needs of those who matter most to your business and your life.
The productivity fundamental of eliminating distractions and interruptions will more easily fall into place if you have already implemented strategies to support the previous principles from The ASCEND Method™ (Advocating for self, Simplifying your focus, Communicating boundaries). As you continue taking the reins on your environment and calendar, you will undoubtedly begin seeing the ROI of self-discipline and self-management.
Interruptions and Distractions
First things first, distractions and interruptions are not synonymous. Distractions are internally driven; most often we distract ourselves! We allow the “shiny objects” to grab our attention even when we know the importance or urgency of the task at hand. Our thoughts are often what pull us away from our own work, which means we have a lot of control over the elimination of distractions.
When I work from home, for example, I often close the blinds because I know how easily I will be (visually) distracted by neighborhood and street activity. A client of mine has adopted the habit of starting her day with a “brain dump” in her paper planner, in an effort to proactively capture any errant thought or reminder that is likely to pop into her mind later that day, as she settles into her workday.
Interruptions, by contrast, are externally driven. Typically it is other people or technology creating interruptions throughout the day. According to a recent study, knowledge/desk workers experience interruptions every three minutes. It is nearly impossible to achieve productivity in 3 minute increments! Once you begin identifying the people or prompts that most frequently interrupt you, the more successfully you can preemptively eliminate them and create greater opportunities to focus and produce!.
Project: Elimination
Begin with curiosity. Spend a few days at work and at home playing the role of observer. I have challenged many clients to have a sticky note next to their computer where they tally the number of times they are interrupted or distracted while working from their desk. Figure out the ratio of self distraction to external interruptions. With this new-found awareness, you can now implement an action plan. Once you have a greater sense of awareness, there are many tactics to minimize what is drawing you away from your focused work.
Maximizing Impact
Below are three key strategies to become a more focused leader while maximizing your impact:
Turn off notifications. You most likely do not need notifications enabled for all of your apps, nor do you need them active on your phone AND watch AND computer AND tablet! Notifications are always the pre-set default because software and app companies want to keep pulling you into their product. It really is on you to take that extra step and turn off notifications wherever and whenever possible. If you didn’t have the bubble or the pop-up, would you actually forget that you had an inbox? Of course not! This is a great example of where we have conditioned ourselves to be reactive. This is a very easy place to flip the script and be proactive. Without the notifications, you choose when you are going to seek out the information you need, instead of allowing the messages to find you at all moments of the day.
Work Offline. If you are a desk/knowledge worker, your computer is likely essential to 80% of your tasks, but often you can get those things completed without always being connected to the internet. Look for opportunities to disconnect for small periods of time, so the outside world doesn’t have access to you via your inbox, social media, and/or breaking news alerts. Are there parts of your day where you can turn off your wifi to create a helpful barrier? Building this habit can contribute to staying singularly focused and can easily eliminate the reflex of accessing information on a whim. Both Microsoft and Google have a feature allowing you to work offline to prevent incoming messages to lead you astray. With the click of a button, you can cut your access to the internet and others access to you for specific periods of time so that you are staying fully focused.
Be Available, not Overly Accessible. Leaders often feel the pull to be “just a call or a wall away” at any moment for their team. The reality is, you do not have to have a 24/7 open door policy to be a supportive and caring leader. As a leader, you can set up designated times each day or week when you are fully available to your team and balance those times with other blocks of protected time when you are unavailable. This is an example of setting healthy boundaries in a workplace. By modeling this behavior, you will empower the team to minimize their own interruptions. Ideally, this can become part of the workplace culture; Cultivating work relationships and respecting the importance of deep work time.
If your team or organization needs a reset to enhance focus and contain the interruptions, reach out to explore a customized training to maximize the final quarter of the year!
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