QuietSpacing

We are bombarded by interruptions and distractions all day long. They affect our focus and cause us to lose time getting back up to speed. If we can increase our productivity by just six minutes each day, we’ll increase our productivity by 24 hours each year. That’s three days of production this year over last! Imagine what it would feel like to have three days of work off your desk right now.

Quelling the Noise

Interruptions and distractions come at you from all angles.  Some are self-imposed.  Others are produced by others.  Still others are the product of the workspace itself.  Here are some ways to reduce the ones most often found in a modern work environment:

• Face Away from Office Traffic. Most people setup their workspace to face towards people passing by. Consider changing your position to face away from that traffic. There are two reasons for this. First, our eyes are attracted to movement. Consequently, our attention flickers up to those passing by. Even if it’s just for a moment, that’s an unnecessary interruption. Second, something far worse can happen – you make eye contact and into your workspace the passerby comes! This results in a complete interruption from what you were doing. A secondary benefit to facing away from traffic is that as people pass by, they see you working – giving further evidence to how productive you are.
• Establish “Office Hours.”To the extent that others report to you, establish times of the day that you are either available (like a college professor) or unavailable (a door-close work period.) If you choose available hours, this is when subordinates can come to you with questions. It forces them to gather together the various things they need your help on and allows you to process them as a batch together. If you choose unavailable hours, these should be used to accomplish those tasks/projects that require your utmost focus. Note, when you come out from behind that closed door, be sure to return e-mails and voice mails as soon as possible.
• Stand When Someone Enters Your Workspace. Some interruptions are inevitable – true urgency, your boss comes in, etc. In that event, we need to find ways to minimize the effect of the distraction. If you stand when someone comes into your workspace, the other person won’t sit down. They’ll feel a sense of urgency themselves – to leave! It’s a great trick to move things along without saying a single word.
• Move Your Physical Inbox Away from Your Workspace. People put things into your inbox all the time. If you’re like most, you keep that inbox close to your desk. This results in an unintended but significant interruption. Find a new place for it. If it can’t easily leave your workspace, place it in a manner that minimizes the distraction – near the door or behind you if you’re now facing away from traffic. Not all interruptions can be eliminated but their effects can be reduced which is still a positive result.

May the Quietest Space Win!

The key to good productivity is focus.  The more time you spend focusing on the task at hand, the more you will get done.  Not only will increased productivity make you feel more accomplished, a quieter workspace will lower your stress level.  It’s a win-win proposition.

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Time itself cannot be managed. It ticks inexorably forward. However, we can manage our behavior to make the most of the time we have. All behaviors employed to best utilize time should target one thing: sharpening focus. The more you focus on the task(s) at hand, the more productive you will be, which will also lower your stress. Increased focus is attained by reducing the interruptions and distractions that pull you away from what you’re doing.

Small Changes Make Big Differences

See if these suggestions help you stay more focused during the day:

• Turn Off New Message Alerts. One of the worst interruptions we suffer is the self-imposed new message alerts on our computers and mobile devices. When they sound or flash, these alerts disrupt what we’re thinking about and distract us away from the effort at hand. Consider this math: a four-second distraction to look at the new e-mail preview multiplied over 100 e-mails per day totals 400 seconds. That’s six and one-half minutes of activity with no corresponding productivity. Aggregating these seconds over a 220-day work year results in over 24 hours of lost productivity!
• Do One Thing at a Time. A recent Stanford University study concluded what we already know intuitively: people don’t multitask well. Consider the last time you tried to have a conversation with someone who was also checking their e-mail. Not very effective, right? The reason is simple. There’s a small cost to each switch of your attention. It’s called, conveniently, a switch cost and it adds up quickly. Just like the new e-mail alerts above, anytime you try to do more than one thing a time, your brain needs a moment between activities to cycle up. The solution is to work on only one thing at time. Work on that one thing until a logical breaking point, put it down and work on the next thing. The results are pretty amazing because you’ve eliminated the switch cost, making you more efficient and more productive. Dare we say that you’re “in the zone?!”
• Schedule Time Between Appointments. Running from meeting to meeting or phone call to phone call is the norm today. The problem isn’t that we have a lot of appointments – though there’s fodder for that cannon too – the problem is how we’re scheduling them. As you dash from one meeting to the next, details about the last meeting are leaking out of your memory. In addition, as you roll into the next meeting, your brain is still processing the last meeting and you’re not focusing on the topic at hand. It’s a lose-lose proposition. Try placing five minutes between appointments so you can jot down any thoughts you have about the meeting/call you just finished before you start up on the next. You will capture the maximum amount of information about each appointment and sharpen your focus on the next event.
• Sequester Yourself. Today’s workplaces are replete with open doors and open spaces. People passing through and by these spaces create distraction. One of the worse distractions occurs in your own workspace. There you are working away on something, intently focused and making headway. Then, all of a sudden, someone is standing there! There is no larger interruption than that. To minimize those events, simply remove yourself from the situation. Take one (or, at most, two) things you need to get done and find a quiet space to work. An empty office works, as does a conference or caucus room. A local library or meeting room in your office building/complex will also suffice. When you go to that location, sit down, do the work you have with you (remember, one or two items), then head back to your normal workspace and return any messages you received while you were gone.

What You Do Makes a Difference

You only get so much time and what you do with it affects how much you get done and how successful you feel!

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We spend every day in the trenches. Putting out today’s fire.  Rising to the next occasion.  We focus on moving the proverbial ball down the field.  Little thought is given to what it means to cross the goal line.

I recently had occasion to enjoy a cup of coffee with a client towards the end of the day. It was a perfect time for us to sit back and just catch up. The conversation worked its way into some “big picture” topics and the question was posed, “Why do we do what we do?”  My answer is very simple and it was refreshing to be reminded of it.

The Most Important Non-Renewable Resource

Much is made today of sustainability and moving beyond the use of Mother Earth’s non-renewable resources – oil, gas, coal, etc. These efforts are important, as are the related efforts of reduce, reuse and recycle.  But, in the end, there is one non-renewaable resource that is most important – time. The reason is simple, we measure our lives by the use of time and when your allotment is gone, no more can be had.

Let me be blunt. At the end of your days, you will never wish you had more money, a bigger house, or better cars. You’ll wish you had more time. That’s because you won’t be done yet. There will be things left for you to do. And they will remain undone. Sad? Maybe, but it also presents an opportunity.

Measuring a Life’s Success

Memories are the currency of life. The number of good ones you create is the measure of your success. This applies to the professional and personal aspects of your life.

On the professional side, contrary to what Loverboy said, you should not be working for the weekend. You need to work at a job and with people you like. This is a huge part of the time you spend making memories, so make sure you’re not squandering it. There’s a whole book in describing how to do this, but here are some examples to get you started:

• Get an officemate their favorite coffee the next time you’re out.
• Try incorporating “please” and “thank you” into every conversation.
• Smile as much as you can stand it.

You contribute your half to the interactions you have each day and you can only control that half.

The same goes for your home life. It was recently reported that Americans spend 150 hours each month watching T.V.  That’s five hours a day! I know, I know. It’s not you, it’s Bob in Accounting. But even if you’re only watching two or three hours a day, consider the memories you’re making. More poignantly, what was the plot of C.S.I. last week? Turn it off; do something else. Anything else, such as:

• Go for a walk.
• Call your mom.
• Have a conversation with your significant other, even if it’s your dog.
• Play Solitaire.

Engage your mind. Take a stab at making a memory worth a damn.

Making Every Day Count

Regardless of your spiritual proclivities, the gift of time is a limited opportunity. Simplifying your perspective on how to utilize the time you have makes decision making easier. Stay focused on maximizing the number of good memories you create – a job well done, an enjoyable working environment, a nice walk around the block with your significant other or your dog or both, a long-overdue and heart-felt “I love you” to your parents – and you will quickly feel more successful.

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Whenever I speak to audiences about productivity, be it during a training seminar or a keynote presentation, I always, always, always recommend that they face away from passing traffic.  The urge to look up is so strong and whenever we fall prey to that urge, we lose our focus.

The natural tendency to look up whenever someone passes by is instinctive.  It’s probably a survival mechanism long-instilled in our psyche to observe the “threat” before it consumes us.  Instead of trying to change our genetic conditioning, let’s see what other options we have.

Position A – Command Central

Most work spaces are configured such that people can see who enters them.  Whether you’re in an office or a cubicle, you usually face those who approach you.  I fashion this Command Central – you command your space by knowing all who enter. 

Innocuous as that seems, the problem is that the human eye has a vision arc of approximately 120 degrees (see Vision Span at Wikipedia).  Thus, when you’ve got your head down focusing on the work at hand, you can see quite a ways “up” in front of you.  That’s why you tend to look up whenever someone passes by your work area.

Each of those slight interruptions add up over the day.  Assume it’s only a two-second interruption and that it only happens 30 times per day.  That’s one minute each day of “lost” time.  Over the course of the average work year – about 220 days – you’ve lost four hours of productivity.  That’s 1/2 of a day in head nods!

Of course, the bigger problem lies in what can happen when you look up.  What’s that, you ask?  That the person passing by makes eye contact, comes into your work area, sits down and starts talking to you!  Now, don’t get me wrong.  I’m a huge fan of strong working relationships with co-workers and colleagues.  But impromptu team building is not the way to accomplish that goal.

The oft-quoted figure on the time it takes to regain focus once interrupted is 20 minutes.  Assuming this drop-in interruption only happens once a week, you’re still losing about 17 hours of productivity each year just trying to get back on task after that impromptu conversation!  Do you really want to spend two extra days each year getting your work done all in the name of unintended team building?

Position B – The Non-Feng-Shui QuietSpacing® Workspace Positioning Recommendation

The solution is to position yourself such that you face away from passing traffic.  If you have an office, position your desk against the wall furthest from the door.  That way people are passing by off your left shoulder.  In addition to eliminating the twitch response to look up on your part, those passing by can see you are working and are more likely leave you alone!  This arrangement also opens up your workspace, giving you a number of furniture arrangement options - like placing a small round table between you and the door so people have a place to come and work with you right in the office.

If you don’t have an office, you can still position yourself to face completely away from passing traffic or mostly away from passing traffic.  Any reduction in the chance you’ll look up pays dividends in terms of increasing your focus and your productivity.

Less Twitching is Always Good

When you position your work space away from passing traffic, you reduce the number of instances that your attention is diverted from the task at hand.  The result is increased productivity and more time on your hands to do other things – like head down to the water cooler to catch up on the latest!

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Our 24×7 world has a rash … a rash of ASAP. It’s highly contagious and seems to strike from the top of the organizational chart and move down. Everyone has been afflicted by this rash and most have inflicted it on others.

By Any Other Name

Identifying the ASAP rash is not hard. Here is a list of symptoms:

• It almost always originates in the workplace. However, it has made inroads into some unfortunate home environments as well.
• The problem often appears in its native form – ASAP – but be on the lookout for its other forms, such as Now or Immediately. Other variations include Urgent and Top/Highest Priority.
• No definable time of day seems to be more or less susceptible to an outbreak, resulting in a higher level of anticipatory anxiety throughout the day among all workers.
• People suffering from this rash appear anxious and pinched. Their rate of speech tends to accelerate and many times they wave files or papers about when moving through the office trolling for available help.
• Subject lines are littered with this rash when it strikes in electronic form.
• Though episodic in nature, once afflicted, suffers tend to relapse quickly and for longer periods of time.

What’s All the Fuss About?

If the H1N1 virus was a pandemic, I don’t think a word has been coined yet to describe the depth, breadth, and severity of this rash. Imagine if everyone starts telling everyone else that everything is due ASAP.  Counter-productively, the workplace would grind to a halt!

For anyone working for anyone else, which basically means … well, everyone, this is not an inconsequential problem. So innocent on its face, when multiplied by the innumerable number of delegations that occur each day, it is easy to see how a frantic, dysfunctional, and unhealthy working environment can quickly develop. All from an innocuous little self-inflicted rash.

Questions We’d Like to Ask

Whenever these edicts issue forth from those handing out assignments, here’s a list of questions I can only hope we’re courageous enough to ask:

• Righty-O, just let me look at my calendar. Hmmm, when exactly is ASAP as I’m not seeing it here?
• ASAP, you said – as soon as possible? Terrific. I’m leaving on my long-overdue two-week vacation in an hour, so I’ll get that back to you in about 15 days. That’s as soon as possible in my world right now.  How’s that work for ya?
• Really? ASAP? If this that important, why is it just now being brought to my attention?  (Oh, silly me, the customer/client/boss just handed it to you too. Did you have the courage to ask them that question?)
• Fabulous! I love having lots to do – job security, you know. Now, since everything you’ve given me is ASAP, which one should I do first?

Take Back the Day

There is no known cure for this malady. However, there are several things you can do both as a work giver and as a work receiver to minimize outbreaks and reduce the impact when the rash flares up. Precautions include:

• Develop an early warning system by regularly surveying the work you have and the work you are expecting to receive. Prioritize each item and spread the priorities out as realistically as possible. Keep in mind that you only get so many hours each day to actually produce work. In this way, work that is susceptible to the ASAP rash can be identified early and steps can be taken to avoid or, at least, reduce the severity of the outbreak.
• Communicate often with co-workers, as the rash tends to be fierce when visibility between co-workers is low, allowing the infection to spread to low priority items left to fester too long.
• As a work giver, think in terms of clearly defined time lines – like a specific date or day of the week. Specific times help also. Converting an ASAP into a Wednesday by 2:00 pm results in complete avoidance of the problem.
• As a work receiver, diplomatically seek this information if it’s not forthcoming from the work giver. Press for specificity and enlist the other person’s help in prioritizing any other work that is equally unclear.

Long-Term Prognosis

Workplaces that have suffered outbreaks of the ASAP rash, in all its forms, have reported significant improvement in quality of work product and worker morale when the simple steps above were followed. Creating an effective working environment that is efficient and highly responsive is a very favorable prognosis given the wide-spread problem identified and addressed here.

To your health!

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