Endlessly Curious

At some time in our lives we’ve probably all felt a sense of absorption when performing a task that borders on euphoria. When in this state we seem to be able to think clearly and effortlessly about the task at hand, we feel like we are outside time and that distractions are lessened.  This state is usually referred to as flow and is generally regarded as the optimum state in which to work creatively and efficiently, however for most of us this state is not that easy to achieve or hold onto, usually due to either distractions or motivations (the task is boring). [1]

What is not common knowledge is the true cost of being continually knocked out of a state of flow by distractions during our working day. In fact it is estimated to take on average at least 15 minutes to regain a state of flow after a distraction [2].  If you think about this in relation to a working day, it would only take interruption every fifteen minutes to effectively eliminate any chance of achieving a state of flow that day: this would require 28-32 interruptions or distractions to eliminate productivity over a 7-8 hour working day.  This may sound like a lot of interruptions but consider for a moment that most people work in a communal work space e.g, in an office where distractions and interruptions include: email, telephone, co-workers, instant messaging, the internet, meetings, eating etc.  It is easy to see how we can end up with days where we achieve very little due to some disruptively timed interruptions, and this can be easily observed by noting which of your co-workers come in early or stay late to ‘get things done’ as they can’t ‘get anything done here 9-5′.

So how can we minimise or eliminate as many of these distractions as possible?  Here are some ideas:

• Meetings: Meetings are an essential way of exchanging information and decisions making but they can also be very disruptive to getting things done.  The most effective way I’ve found with dealing with meetings disrupting my working day is to book myself for chunks of time I call work blocks. Usually these blocks are for the duration of a morning or afternoon and I will also block off a full day each week plus usually at least two or three smaller blocks.  The more I discuss this with more senior and experienced individuals the more widespread I’ve discovered this technique to be, in fact the more senior the person the more likely they are to be using some form of this strategy.  Yet most people starting out in industry are not being told about it, which means they are having their days fragmented by meetings which could easily have been scheduled at a less disruptive time.
• Email: First off, if you are in a large company chances are you are on more internal email lists than you need to be. Cull any that are not useful.  Next turn off all new email notifications, especially the visual or audio ones, and leave notifications on for messages marked as high priority so when it is truly important you can be contacted quickly.
• Telephone: Your companies telephone system will probably support the ability to set your phone to go straight to voice mail without ringing: use this when you are trying to concentrate during a work block.
• The Internet: Having the internet freely available can be great when you need to look something up for your job, however I’ve found it too distracting at times to get sucked into a infinite cycle of looking things up, especially if what I’m looking up is more interesting than what I’d otherwise have to work on.  I’ve tended to combat this by getting my IT department to block my internet connection to non-work related sites from 10:00-12:00 and 13:00-16:00 as I’ve found this the simplest method to break my internet news checking habit and most IT departments will discreetly set this up for you.  If I think of something I want to find out I make a note of it and look it up later if it still seems important.
• Instant Messaging: Instant messaging software like MSN Messenger, ICQ, GoogleTalk etc can become very distracting, personally I’ve not had too many issues in this area and if I’m wanting to not be disturbed I either mark myself as ‘Do No Disturb’ (DND) and my contacts respect that or I sign out of the system while I’m working.
• Co-Workers: Interruptions from co-workers can be a very common form of interruptions either with drive by questions or just wanting to chit-chat. There is nothing wrong with this if you’re not in the middle of something but it can be very disruptive if you’re trying to concentrate on something complex.  The easiest way to manage this is have some visual que to inform your co-workers of your preference to be interrupted or not. This can include: wearing headphones, a DND sign, closing your office door etc, which I’ve found most people will respect 90% of the time.

[1] Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow:The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper and Row

[2] DeMarco & Lister (1999). PeopleWare: Productive Projects and Teams. (2nd Ed). Dorset House Publishing; New York.(p.63)