As the owner of an IT services firm, I see plenty of instances where communication, collaboration and notification tools actually make people less productive. Across various studies, it takes the average person somewhere between 16-27 minutes to get up to speed on a task, yet the average worker is interrupted every 3-9 minutes. Regardless of the actual numbers, you experience interruptions and understand their impact on productivity, which is why you may arrive to work before others or take work home. Interruptions increase workplace anxiety and are overcome by working from home for many people. However, when we expect people to work from home to complete their regular responsibilities, the reality is we do not fully value their time away from work. Stress can leak into one's personal life, and the personal-life stress is carried back to work, making a person even less productive. More importantly, the idea of valuing personal time becomes contradictory and that can affect organizational health.
The ability to instantly send a message has translated into the absurd expectation that the response should be equally immediate. We now have text and instant messaging, email and notification alerts for everything. The constant dinging of a cellphone is a continuous interrupter. People are busy, but they are not fully productive. Productivity is a focused work session upon a prioritized task, but we tolerate unfocused work time upon a variety of tasks to our collective detriment. Yes, you can email your co-worker about the progress of a report due in three weeks, but refrain from calling the person about it five minutes later. Everyone needs time to focus to actually perform the work that has the highest priority.
The first collaborative tool of the past century was the telephone, but it is the least used today by most professionals. The societal priority of notifications for the majority of people from most important to least is: call, text, instant message, email and then voicemail. Most people acknowledge this order, and we have been reprogrammed to read a text message even if we are in the middle of an important call. I've fought this battle, and here are the tools I personally use to focus more on work.
I schedule time for my most important work and communicate times of availability. I set my phone to "do not disturb," then close my email and all other applications. You can use the Freedom.to tool if you want to automate the blocking of apps and notifications across all your devices. Use a sign on your door or cubicle to let others know when you will next be available. The Pomodoro technique allows me to focus on tasks in 25-minute blocks, and I use a Pomodoro timer (not on my cell phone) to begin a time block.
After a block, I take a five-minute break, but I do not read email or touch my cellphone because they can become a black hole for productivity. I do one 25-minute block every morning before ever opening Microsoft Outlook. I record my mental stopping point before attending to scheduled items or out-of-office appointments and begin a new 25-minute block upon return. I tell everyone that I prioritize voice-to-voice over other forms of communication, and they are welcome to interrupt me based on their definition of an emergency, which is rarely abused.
Even if I'm in the office all day, I set my Outlook out-of-office message almost daily to notify senders when I will be available. I even set aside focused blocks for Outlook, and I use Sanebox.com to presort my messages. At our morning huddle, I communicate my daily priorities and availability and get the same from direct reports. On our internal Microsoft Teams, we have a channel called "stepping away" where we notify one another that we will be unreachable and when we will return. We respect these blocks, especially when going down the organizational chart because managerial hypocrisy is the antithesis of team building and servant leadership. A manager's core responsibility is to "clear the decks" for team members so each individual can be fully engaged for the longest sustained period of time. By using technology wisely and no longer pardoning the interruptions, you can improve your productivity and be respected for not interrupting others.
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