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Managing interruptions – so you achieve more in less time

With emails and mobiles these days, we are easily sucked in to feeling that we have to respond the instant a message comes through. Unfortunately, doing so interrupts our concentration thereby making us less efficient.  Our fast response sets the expectation that we can and will do this again. By responding to people interrupting us we can inadvertently encourage others to avoid taking responsibility to deal with things that really they should deal with.

Sometimes a colleague needs your attention to enable them to progress a job they are doing. Sometimes a client wants instant responses.  In both cases, setting some expectations early on and sticking to boundaries will help you both.

Book out a meeting with yourself for complex work.  Set expectations with clients by telling them that obviously there will be times when you can’t call them straight back and you will always aim to return calls or emails the same day or next morning. Agree times when you will discuss work with colleagues so that you both can plan when this will happen.

There are plenty more tips below from Jackie Fletcher – who is no stranger to the challenge of interruptions as she’s a former London insolvency practitioner with one of the big 4.

 

Tips from Jackie on how to avoid interruptions, and manage expectations - useful for everyone in business

  1. Turn off the 'you have mail' alert on your PC and only look at your email at certain times during the day - and limit this to a few times unless absolutely necessary.
  2. Use a different work space to get a particular task or project done, such as an empty conference room, an absent colleague's vacant office or even the local library.
  3. Estimate the time for a task and then increase it to allow for interruptions.  Finishing earlier will feel like a bonus!
  4. Leave space in your schedule generally so you have time to deal with the unexpected and react effectively and calmly.
  5. If someone walks in and starts talking at you, when they draw breath explain that you would be happy to discuss this with them, however you have a deadline to meet so could you agree another time to talk - and let them see you note this in your appointment diary.
  6. When a meeting is scheduled with a colleague, go to their office. It is much easier to leave their room then to get them to leave yours once they are settled.
  7. If you are interrupted when dealing with a task, take a few moments to write yourself a note about what stage you were at - this will make it easier to recall your thought processes and carry on with the task later.
  8. For people who tend to pop in several times a day with various non urgent queries, have them list them and reduce the number of times they seek your assistance by dealing with several items in one discussion.
  9. When asked if you have a minute to spare, answer that you only literally have one minute, give a brief reason why (people respond well to 'because') ask if that one minute is enough or should you both agree another time to talk.
  10. If a scheduled meeting is running over for no good purpose, collect all your papers together, put your pen down and thank them for their time - then offer to walk them to the coffee machine if they still don't get it!

    11.  

    How to create GOALS which STICK

The first secret is to set the best goals in the first place.
Those which are really meaningful and motivating for you. Those which will make the biggest positive difference to your life. Those which you want as opposed to those you think you should do.
 
Do this by considering the various aspects of your life, your career, your relationships and your work-life balance. What about finances, health and social life?


Instead of giving it a passing thought, allocate 5 quality minutes doing our Wheel of Life self assessment exercise on our website. When you are ready you’ll find it under the Life or Career sections.


Next…
Write down what you want to be different and record your goals positively so that reading them inspires you.  By writing them down in this way you dramatically increase your chances of achieving them.


The third secret to success is to create your strategy to support you in implementing it. The reason why many New Year Resolutions fail is because we fail to plan how to implement them.

This requires the goal to be broken down to smaller steps and its progress tracked.

 

We are creatures of habit and change needs a minimum of two things to happen:

1. Stop some previous habit;

2. Install the new one.

We can help ourselves to do this by recording our progress in some visual way. Alternatively, we can set mini resolutions each week and resolve to take one step each week (or each day) towards achieving our goals.

 

It’s worth remembering that you either take a step towards or a step back.

Standing still is moving backwards as time stands still for no one. That’s another reason why many people hire a coach because they want to achieve their goals faster.