According to a study, we get distracted every 11 minutes. Our brain takes 25 minutes to refocus on the original task after that distraction. This sounds like a lot of time wasted. Time management has become very pertinent in today’s fast-paced world with loads of distractions. Smartphones, hunger, useless meetings, and colleagues peering in for small talks, can all cause a lot of time to be wasted.
Interruptions can cause following issues:
- External Prioritization (happens when you leave your task and start prioritizing someone else’s tasks)
- Breaking the focus (you lose focus after distractions and mind takes time to refocus)
- Losing energy (just like our physical limits, our body also has mental limits and it gets tired after a certain time)
Avoiding distractions / Mitigations:
1: Smart Phones:
Smartphones are one of the biggest distractions. On average we get 100 notifications per day including emails, message notifications, and social media alerts. We can put smartphones in DND mode or silent mode whenever starting to work. Turning mobile data off for the interval of work is also a good way to avoid unnecessary notifications. In case of emergency, a person can call you.
2: Noisy Environment:
There is a chance that if you work in an office, you’ll have a lot of noise around, especially if it is an open space cubicle. Your mind needs silence to focus. This can be done by using noise-canceling headphones. Or you can try to shift to a quieter place in the office or remote workplace.
3: Clutter:
While a little clutter might help in creative jobs but in most cases, a clutter-free work area helps you stay more productive. So take 10–15 minutes daily to organize your workplace.
4: Eisenhower Matrix:
Too many tasks can also lead to poor time management. In this case, you can use the Eisenhower matrix to prioritize your tasks. Make a list of all the tasks you have to complete in a day or a week. Then make four categories.
- Important, Urgent
- Important, Not urgent
- Not important, Urgent
- Not important, Not urgent.
Now you can list all of your tasks according to these categories. Important, Urgent tasks need to be done first. You can schedule important, not urgent tasks later. As for not important and urgent tasks, you can delegate them to other team members or outsource that work to someone else to do. As for not important and not urgent tasks, just remove them from your schedule.
4: Pomodoro technique:
Pomodoro technique is another effective technique for time management. You can read my article explaining this technique here.
5: Decision making:
Our mind has a pool of limited mental resources that it can use at a time. It gets tired after making too many decisions. This phenomenon can also be explained by ego depletion model. Just the way you will be physically too exhausted to play cricket after jogging a lot, likewise, you can mentally feel exhausted too after spending time in decision making for small tasks or distractions. The solution is to set a routine and decide all the unimportant things in advance. For instance, decide your wardrobe and eating schedule in advance. People like Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Barack Obama wore same clothes in the office to avoid this type of distraction.
There are other distractions too like unnecessary meetings, workshops, nosey colleagues, or wasting time thinking about big tasks instead of solving them. The mitigations involve not attending workshops/meetings that are not important for your career or well-being, asking distracting colleagues to not disturb you for a specific time period, and breaking down big tasks into small steps to solve them.
