Removing Distractions Series: Set Your Intention

Actions to take: Quit mixing little breaks into your work time. Instead, set ambitious-but-realistic goals for getting tasks done quickly. Use the time you save for real breaks that allow you to genuinely rest your brain. Take 10 minutes in the morning thoroughly planning your day. If that plan is disrupted, spend a few minutes rewriting the plan rather than just trying to play catch-up.

This is one entry in a short series about removing distractions from your work, inspired by the Cost of Distractions post from early September. There are both productivity and mental health benefits to removing distractions while working on anything that requires focus.

No matter the amount of work we have to get done in a day, we manage to sabotage ourselves. When our load is heavy, we feel overwhelmed and find ways to avoid getting started. When our load is light, we stretch things out to fill our day.

It might not be obvious, but both of these techniques contribute to mental exhaustion. On days where we are overburdened, we not only have a lot to do, but we add stress by putting it off. We do fun* things to put off work, like checking social media or playing a quick game of solitaire. These activities add task-switching costs to our time and mental energy. Light load days can be even more draining. Because we need to stretch, say, 3 hours of work into an 8 hour day, we take lots of little breaks. We are constantly switching between our actual work and fun* stuff. We might check the same Slack channel or news site a dozen times while working on a single task. 

*Note: These activities are not actually any fun. They are just ways to kill time because we are bored or because we are dreading how much work we need to do. 

Stop this nonsense. 

Set your intention for each hour of the day. Decide that you will spend a certain amount of time really working and a certain amount of time really relaxing, rather than constantly muddling the two. Here is a quick how-to:

1. Plan your tasks at the start of the day. 10 minutes in the morning can save you hours of procrastination throughout the day. Go beyond making a list of tasks to do—decide how long each task will take and when to do it. People generally have the most mental energy available at the beginning of the day and lose steam as the hours go by. Whatever you are least interested in doing, schedule it as early as possible. You will be much more likely to get it done that way.
2. Work ambitiously, take breaks ambitiously. Work well for 45 minutes, really step on the gas. Do 2 hours' worth of work in that 45 minutes. Then take a real break, something that relaxes and calms your brain. My default is music and a walk. You won't need the break every hour, but you are welcome to take it as often as you like. As long as you commit yourself to hard work during those 45 minutes, you'll still get more done than you used to. If your office policy doesn't allow this, it is a bad policy. (Frankly, if you are managing people, you are probably exempt. That means you are not paid by the hour—you are paid for results.)
3. Rewrite your plan for the day when necessary. Some days, the curveballs keep coming. You made a plan to do x, y, and z by noon. 12:00 rolls around and urgent issues have kept you from even getting started. When you have a minute to breathe, step back and reconsider your plan. Simply trying to catch up is the wrong strategy. When you feel behind, it adds stress and pulls focus from your work. Instead, rewrite your plan. Decide what should be moved to another day. Get deadline extensions if necessary. Just like the 10 minutes in the morning, you will save time and mental energy by spending these few minutes reconsidering your day.

People are willing to put off work and take little breaks all the time, as long as it is not a "real" break. They will take several 5-minute breaks over the course of an hour to chat with someone, poke around on the internet, or play a quick game of solitaire. But the idea of taking a single 15-minute break each hour is clearly over the line for them. This is the opposite of effective behavior. They are constantly switching tasks and engaging in "always on" brain activity. That is how you burn yourself out. 

Instead, set your intention. Do your best, most efficient work. When you gain extra time because of it, use that time for genuine breaks, not time killers. You will be more productive, more effective, and you will feel better at the end of the day. 

Removing Distractions Series: Turn Down Interruptions

Actions to take: When you are involved in a task and an employee interrupts, ask if it can wait. Don't make excuses about being busy. Simply pick a better time and ask if you can talk about it then. In any healthy working relationship, they will answer honestly. If you say you will follow up later, make certain that you do. 

This is one entry in a short series about removing distractions from your work, inspired by the Cost of Distractions post from early September. There are both productivity and mental health benefits to removing distractions while working on anything that requires focus.

Note: This post is written with the manager-employee relationship in mind. It works equally well with your coworkers. This advice is less applicable when the person interrupting you is above you in the chain of command.

When you manage people, there is enormous pressure to be available to your employees any time, all the time. "My door is always open" has become a cliché phrase in TV and film. The show will have a character say it genuinely to let the viewer know that this is a kind-hearted, supportive boss. If the character is a Michael Scott type, they might say this just before their door swings shut. Bosses who mean it when they say it are good bosses. Bosses who don't mean it are bad bosses.

Let's face reality. Your door is not always open. Literally, you have closed-door meetings all the time. When you see that your boss is calling, you close your door. When you have performance appraisal meetings, you close your door. When you talk to HR, you close your door. If you have ever said anything that resembles "My door is always open" then you are being naïve or hypocritical or both.

With that myth dispelled, let's face another reality: sometimes your solo work is more important than the thing your employee wants to ask about. Occasionally, it makes sense to ask your employee to come back in a few hours, or say that you'll follow up with them later that day, so you can continue with the train of thought you were already on. Here's the catch 22. You don't know which is more important until you've asked the employee what they want to talk about. And by the time they explain it, you're already in the conversation, so you might as well have it. Right? 

Well, no. 

We are, in fact, conflating two concepts. Important and urgent are separate ideas that should be treated separately. The question of which is more important, the employee's question or your solo work, is irrelevant. The employee's question could be of fantastic importance. That is all the more reason to wait until you are not distracted by other work. If you pause whatever you're doing, you will be in a state of mind to clear away the employee's question as quickly as possible to return to your task. That's a terrible strategy for dealing with important questions. 

If the employee's question is urgent, that's another story. So how do we judge urgency without getting sucked into the details? We simply ask if it can wait.

Employee: "Hey boss, can I bother you for a minute?"
You: "I'm right in the middle of something. Can it wait until the afternoon?" 

If you have a relationship that is built on frequent communication and trust, this exchange is no problem. You don't need to explain to them that you are so backed up and need to finish this and etc. etc. etc. Make the question perfunctory, make it unexceptional. We aren't pleading with our employees. It should be normal for you to deflect distractions when you are involved in a task that requires focus. Frankly, it sets a good example. We get better work out of people who become absorbed in a task and can work through it start to finish. Lead by example. 

As is my occasional habit with these posts, I'll finish with one caveat. If you don't do routine one-on-ones, you can't take the advice from this post. When you have a real working relationship with your employees, turning down their interruption is nothing. It's one interaction out of dozens they will have with you over the course of the month, and they know they have that time reserved each week for whatever is on their mind. However, if you are in the habit of only exchanging mundane pleasantries with your people, this interruption may be the only real interaction they have with you. In that case, it will be a big deal for you to say no. Your employee will leave with the message, "The one time I tried to bring an issue to the boss, they turned me down." Yet another example of how routine one-on-ones make all other work go more smoothly. 

When you're in the middle of something, turn down interruptions. Practice this over the next several weeks. Even if it is not strictly necessary, try it two or thee times each week to get into the habit. You'll find that the more you do it, the more natural it seems. If you say you'll be the one to get back to them, make good on that promise. If you ask them to follow up and they don't, double check. Most of the time, they'll say they figured it out on their own. Even better! You'll work better. You'll set an example of how to work better for your employees. And occasionally, you'll make less work for yourself. There is no downside to turning down interruptions.

Removing Distractions Series: Email Twice a Day

Actions to take: Only spend time on email at the beginning and end of each day. With practice, you can get your email inbox to zero in 30 minutes or less. Turn off all email notifications. Close the app when not in use. Get more efficient at both reading and responding to email.

This is one entry in a short series about removing distractions from your work, inspired by the Cost of Distractions post from early September. There are both productivity and mental health benefits to removing distractions while working on anything that requires focus.

I have a colleague whose email signature includes the line "Please note: My working hours may not be your working hours. Please do not feel obligated to reply outside of your normal work schedule." As I understand it, her entire workplace uses this line. I wish every organization encouraged its employees to have a similar message.

The best thing about this signature isn't what it says to the recipient. It is what it says about the sender. It says, "Don't expect me to respond immediately either."  It says, "We don't use email for urgent business." It says, "My workplace values thought and focus, not round-the-clock availability." 

It shouldn't be necessary to make these statements, but it is. Most organizations won't come right out and say that you need to check your email constantly. The assumption is there, however. And it is a massive productivity killer. Every time you are notified of a new email coming in, your attention gets pulled from whatever you were doing. It is worse than that. Even if no new emails pop up while you are working on something, you won't be able to focus completely. Because we are so primed to expect email, we have trained ourselves to never get immersed in a task. 

You can work better than this.

When you get into work in the morning, spend enough time to clear your email down to zero. Before you leave for the day, clear your email down to zero. If you are waiting for something important from your boss, take a minute to check it once before or after lunch. Other than that, stay out of email entirely. In the vast majority of workplaces, you can get your email down to zero in 30 minutes. I'm saying, at a maximum, you should spend 61 minutes in your email app per day.

That figure sounds laughable to some of you. In many organizations, there is so much email that you wouldn't even dream of getting through it in an hour a day. You can. You have to work a lot smarter, and you have to ween yourself off the false premise that you need to be available at all times. Here's how to do it.

How to work smarter: 

1. Set up sorting rules. Outlook (and any email app like it) has a robust set of tools for automatically slotting emails into folders. Set up a folder for email that comes from directly up the chain—that's the important one to check every time you open your app. Set up another for emails that come from your staff—also make sure to check that daily. The rest of the rules are up to you. Virtually everything else is okay to wait a day or two if you run out of time in your 30 minutes. Half or more can likely be funneled into folders you never have to check (e.g. automatically generated emails from the timeclock software).
2. Scan for the bottom line. Most people are terrible at writing emails. The most important point will be buried in the 3rd sentence of the 5th paragraph. Don't read emails top to bottom. Instead, scan for "the ask" that the sender is making (What type of response do they need, if any? Are they notifying you of a deadline? Are they briefing you on new information?). After you find the ask, go back to the top of the email. You'll be able to read and absorb much more quickly knowing the point of it all.
3. Respond briefly. You are spending too much time composing your emails. You don't need to do all that explaining. You don't need to re-read it for the third time to make sure your wording is perfect. People probably aren't reading it. Those who do read it are probably getting lost in the message you intend to convey. Just write less.
• Yes, some emails need a great deal of care. Maybe you are reporting to your boss on a highly sensitive matter. Compose that correspondence outside the email app and outside the 30-minute windows we're talking about here. 
4. Or don't respond at all. Very little of our email expects to get a response. For the 5 percent or so of emails that do pose some kind of question, ask yourself how likely it is that another person on the team has the same thoughts you do. If there are good odds you'd just be saying the same thing as everyone else, then don't spend the time.
• If you are only checking your email at the beginning and end of the day, a colleague will probably respond before you. Likely, they'll cover most of the ground you would have. Then you can spend your time effectively by bringing up points that are unique to your perspective.

How to commit to this new method:

1. Turn off all email notification: The default notification settings for Outlook are wild. You get a little colored envelope on the Outlook icon in your taskbar, a pleasant-but-fairly-long chime sound, and a popup preview of the email that hangs out for 5 seconds or so. Based on how thoroughly you are alerted, you can be forgiven for thinking that email is the most important thing in the world. It is not. If you take no other advice from this post, at least turn off these notifications. Even if you can't help checking email every 15 minutes, at least you won't be getting pinged every 3.
2. Close the app entirely. This has the same effect as step one, just better. Most of you won't be able to bring yourself to do it though. You will be surprised at the fear of missing out that this act creates. To fight the FOMO, track how often you give in and open the app outside of your morning and end-of-work times. Whenever you give in, mark how often you found something that couldn't wait until your usual email review (prediction: it will be 0% of the time).
3. Realize most people won't notice. According to a MarketWatch study, senders typically expect a response within 24 hours, but recipients often reply within 15 minutes. Nobody wants you to be that on-the-ball! I mentioned the twice-a-day email method to one of my bosses after almost 2 years working together. Until that moment, she had no idea that was how I operated.
4. Accept that you'll occasionally falter. It is very difficult to switch to this method after spending years with "always on" email. Even after you see how well it works, you'll find yourself peeking into your email app every hour "just in case." It's okay not to be perfect. (Though I really do encourage you to track how often these cheat-checks end up being anything other than wasted time)

The advice here extends beyond email. Give this treatment to any communication app that has the ability to distract you mid-thought (I'm looking at you, Slack). Schedule when you are going to use it and for how long. Stick to that plan. You'll find that you are much more able to immerse yourself in tasks. When you can focus completely, it virtually guarantees better, more efficient work.