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PAE
The average employee is getting interrupted “Eisenhower Principle” is said to be how the
50 to 60 times per day, and about 80% of former president prioritized his own workload.
these interruptions are unimportant. As a
result, people are spending little time in To optimize an asynchronous message and
what psychologists call “the flow state,” a to avoid a lot of follow-up emails, include the
space where people are up to five times following in your initial request:
more productive, according to research from • Sufficient details
McKinsey.
• Clear action item(s)
The constant distractions are not only leaving
people less productive, but also more stressed • A due date
than ever, with a lack of control over one’s
work being cited as a major contributor to • A path of recourse if the recipient is unable
workplace stress, according to the American to meet your requirements
Institute of Stress. So, how do we avoid
distractions in the office in order to take control 2. Batch Check Everything
of our days, do our best work, and improve “Just quickly checking” anything, even for
our emotional well-being? one-tenth of a second, can add up to a 40%
productivity loss over the course of a day, and
1. Practice Asynchronous Communication it can take us 23 minutes to get back into the
When you get an email, it’s actually OK to zone after task switching.
think: “I’ll get to this when it suits me.”
Rather than sporadically checking things
Aside from the benefit of giving people more throughout the day, we should batch check
time for uninterrupted focus, asynchronous email, instant messages, social media, and
communication predisposes people to better even text messages, at predetermined times.
decision-making by increasing the amount of
time we have to respond to a request. When If you struggle with self-control, tools like
you’re on a phone call or video chat, you’re Gmail’s Inbox Pause plugin enable you to
making real-time decisions, whereas if you’re pause your inbox once you’ve checked it and
communicating via email, you have more time only unpause it when you’re ready. Blocksite
to think about your response. and the Freedom app also allow you to block
access to specific websites and apps during
In order to practice this successfully, we specified intervals.
must do away with the arbitrary “urgency”
that still plagues workplaces the world over, 3. Do Not Disturb
almost a century after Dwight D. Eisenhower, If you’re reading this and thinking: “But I work
who, quoting Dr. J. Roscoe Miller, president in an open-plan office, and it’s impossible
of Northwestern University, said: “I have to avoid interruptions,” try using a signaling
two kinds of problems: the urgent and the mechanism to let your team know that
important. The urgent are not important, you’re in the zone (or trying to get there) and
and the important are never urgent.” This
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