Productivity in your workplace of distractions

Just because you are at work does not mean you are getting work done! I am sure you know the drill.

Maybe it is that Product Manager who keeps sending you questions on Slack, when you desperately try to finish your Sketch design. Or the emails from your boss assigning you some extra bugs, while you’re in the “zone” analysing data for that new machine learning algorithm.

Should I mention the constant chatter from the loud engineers sitting next to you in your “productive” open space? Thank God you have still got these huge noise-canceling headphones that make your ears sweat, but then this annoying Sales Rep comes right next to you and starts these weird questions about when you will release this and that.

Two conversations, four emails, half a travel blog, and 23 minutes and 15 seconds later you come to: “What was that code or design I was working on again?”

I don’t need to tell you that interruptions in the workplace is a universal phenomenon and has massively increased the past years, I am sure you already know that. What you probably don’t know is that interruptions cost the U.S. economy $588 billion a year! In fact, you need to blame yourself as well for that, because interruptions are not always external.

There are also internal interruptions, the self-generated ones. Have you tried disabling all notifications on your phone, just to end up checking Facebook, Messenger, emails every 30 minutes? These internal interruptions are currently surging due to your shorter attention span caused by Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc, the increased need for dopamine while you are “hunting” information, the Fear-Of-Missing-Out, etc. You don’t always need a notification to check Slack or Twitter, right?

But then you are also frequently interrupted from external cues, such as colleagues coming right to your desk, chatter taking place next to you, “persuasive” notifications, scientifically tested to grab your attention, coming from Slack, Gmail, Hipchat, Asana, you name it.

The two are obviously intermingled in a sense that the more prone to external interruptions you are, the less you will need them to interrupt yourself from now on. It’s all about making your brain used to getting interrupted and craving for the next information intake. Thereby, training yourself to become less able to focus.

The cost of interruptions is not minor and, apart from the billions of money lost, surveys have shown that switching tasks so rapidly throughout the workday is causing you a great deal of stress. Let’s face it, statistically speaking you are probably among the 90% of people that are not great multitaskers. And that is OK! Especially if you produce high attention work, you need a certain time to get in the “zone”, thus distractions are a productivity killer for you and revenue killer for your employer. But who is to blame for these increased external interruptions in the workplace?

• The “always-available” expectations and “asynchronish” communication generated by the rise of Slack and the rest of the workplace IMs.
• The excessive email usage, with very long unstructured emails, and unnecessarily adding people in the loop.
• Redundant meetings and productivity lost due to the difference between the ways managers and makers work, causing US businesses to lose $37 billion a year.
• The settings inside open spaces, which apart from a sense of organisational belonging, can damage productivity.

Don’t even think this is not that big of a problem for you, just because you usually glance at the email or IM and then go back to your work. Unfortunately, an interruption of 2.7 seconds is enough to double the rates of errors, because you lose your train of thought.

By now I hope you are sold on the fact that being constantly interrupted is not OK and interruptions are not part of your job. You might welcome them every now and then, when you are doing some mundane and boring task, or you just want to chill for a bit, but what happens when you are trying hard to focus and get some real work done? Or when you have tons of stuff to do?

I guess it doesn’t make you feel nice knowing that on average you spent 2 work hours per day recovering from interruptions!

The good news is that there are certain things you could do to claim back these 2 hours per day and minimise the stress caused by workplace interruptions.

Some strategies that have worked out well for others?

• Disabling email notifications and checking them in batches 2–3 times a day.
• Letting your colleagues know that when you have your headphones on, they should not interrupt you, unless the building is on fire.
• Finding some quiet place inside the office, when you want to “enter the zone”.
• Switching on Do Not Disturb Mode on Slack.
• Listening to some focus-boosting music on Noisli or Brain.fm.
• Minimising distractions with a tool like Freedom that blocks certain websites and apps.
• Trying some meditation with the guidance of Calm or Headspace.
• Buying yourself a pair of good noise cancelling headphones.

The bottom line is that you ‘d better become more conscious from now on about how much you let interruptions enter your workday, but also think twice before you interrupt again the person with the headphones sitting next to you.

And if you are a designer or developer, maybe it is a good idea to consider carefully the value you offer to your users next time you want to grab their attention with one of those sneaky hooks?