Manage My Employees

Short article #32

Interruptions, whether they are necessary or unnecessary, represent definite productivity killers.

Unnecessary interruptions, and interruptions which are important enough to make their way to your desk but are ill-timed, could often be handled at much better hours of the day. (Like when you’re not in the middle of really critical work or pressing deadlines.)

Successfully managing interruptions presents three immediate benefits:

One: helps us achieve higher levels of personal productivity.

Two: we can get more done at the office in less time, on time.

Three: we can get more done at the office which helps contribute to healthier work-life balance.

How much time does an interruption actually waste?

• First, there’s the amount of time the interruption actually takes, maybe thirty seconds to thirty minutes… or more.
• Second, there’s the amount of ‘recovery’ time—this is the amount of time it takes to get our concentration and focus back on to the task. Studies suggest that it can easily take five minutes or more to get back in the flow of the work we were doing when the interruption occurred.

So, an unnecessary or ill-timed interruption can kill off significant, productive time every day.

Think about this, if you routinely get numerous interruptions every day, depending on whether or not you’d classify them as unnecessary or not, you might be losing several hours of time each day… totaling “hundreds” of hours a year!

With better instructions to your staff—or better delegation and communications you could conceivably eliminate many of the unnecessary interruptions that land in your office.

In my next short article (#33) you’ll find some practical tips for managing interruptions more effectively.