(This article is second in a series of five addressing how to spend less time at work – and still be a good employee)
The previous article in this series addressed how to identify your most productive activities. The quickest way, but not always easiest, to increase your productivity is to decrease your workplace distractions. This will allow you to focus on your productive activities or “work goals.” Why are these the quickest methods? These ideas require only a few seconds to a several minutes of your time to implement. Why are these some of the more difficult methods to increase productivity? All of these ideas require willpower and the ability be alone.
As the guys at 37signals write, alone time is when productivity happens:
When you have a long stretch when you aren’t bothered, you can get in the zone. The zone is when you are most productive. It’s when you don’t have to mindshift between various tasks. It’s when you aren’t interrupted to answer a question or look up something or send an email or answer an im. The alone zone is where real progress is made.Getting in the zone takes time. And that’s why interruption is your enemy. It’s like rem sleep — you don’t just go to rem sleep, you go to sleep first and you make your way to rem. Any interruptions force you to start over. rem is where the real sleep magic happens. The alone time zone is where the real development magic happens. – Getting Real
- Close Your Door
Those of us lucky enough to have our own office can simply close the door to prevent distractions. If a closed door doesn’t stop your coworkers, try a “Do Not Disturb” sign. If an agressively worded sign doesn’t work, try headphones. - Headphones
If you can’t close the door to your office (i.e. you don’t have one or you are in a cubicle) bring headphones to the office. If you are in a loud office, or simply near an annoying loudmouth, listening to music, ambient sounds, or white noise will allow you to focus on your work rather than what is going on around your desk. If you are in a quieter office environment, but are distracted by people stopping by your office, you don’t even need to plug the headphones in, but make sure that they are visible to people who attempt to speak with you. - Reduce Clutter
Clean your office. Not just your desktops, but your shelves, desks, and cabinets. Throw away anything that you can do without. Put the files you rarely use but must keep into boxes and put them into office storage (You can usually get away with this without permission – just write your name on the boxes and stick them in a closet). Get rid of your pen collection – you only need one pen at a time! Get rid of trinkets and excessive photos. I recommend removing as much as possible from your workspace. Try to not to put any in storage or take anything home. You probably won’t miss any of it. - Body language
Every office has one or two talkers. They wander from person to person with an update on the latest news story they’ve read or the great joke they heard at their knitting group the night before. These people entrench themselves in your office and won’t leave until they have completed their verbal emesis. Their stories suck, they are boring, and they waste your time. The problem is – sometimes this person is your boss! No matter who it is, the best solution is to use body language – rather than verbal ques – to let them know to shut up and get the heck out. What’s the best way to do this? Start by never making eye contact. From the second they walk into your office, never look them in the eye. If this doesn’t work, turn your back on the talker; turn your chair and begin to work on something. If your office set-up doesn’t allow this, begin reading something on your desk. Looking down, rather than up, and hunching your shoulders over will give the impression that you are not interested and not listening. Show the person the top of your head and don’t give them any hope of making eye contact. When all else fails, walk to the bathroom. If they follow you there, call HR immediately – that’s just freakin weird. - No news & social networking websites!
Don’t let yourself get distracted while on your computer. Use willpower to NEVER check a news or social networking site while at work. Each time you go on to a site like this, it will take you at least five minutes to get back into the full swing of work after you stop checking the website. That means that if you check a non-work related website every fifteen minutes, you are losing 15 minutes of productivity each hour. Losing that much time each hour leaves you with only six productive hours in an eight hour work day! - Only check email every two hours
Email is the biggest timesuck in offices today. Many of us receive 100 or more emails a day. That’s the equivalent of one every 4.8 minutes of an eight hour day. Too many of us are trained to treat email like a phone call. Every time we receive a new email notification, we check our inbox immediately. This gets you out of the rhythm of your work. Just like checking news and social networking websites, you are knocked out of productivity for at least five minutes after you stop checking your email. Turn off your email program and only turn it on every two hours or less. Write down what times you will check email and ONLY turn on your email client at these times. Do not allow yourself to even take a peek at your email at other times. - Limit your phone time
If you aren’t in a sales role that requires you take clients calls while in the office, only take phone calls during pre-determined hours of the day. Write these times down and coordinate them with the time you allow yourself to check your email. A more drastic, but more effective step is to not accept any phone calls. Simply check your voicemails at the same time you check your emails. Email is a much more effective communication tool than speaking on the phone, and most voicemails can be replied to via email. This will keep your work interactions to the point and prevent small talk from creeping into business conversations.
These are very simple methods remove workplace distractions. Try implementing them, one at a time, and see how significant of an impact they have on your productivity. Don’t forget to continue to track your productivity to ensure that you are making a measurable change in your work habits.
As I said in the last post, try to maintain these changes for 28 days to ensure that they stick. It’s easy to be ultra-focused one day and then slack off the next. Use these tips to force yourself to have a constant laser-focus when at work.
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