Perry Maddox shares a simple device for avoiding distractions and improving productivity in the workplace, especially relevant while working from home.
You’re in the groove.
It’s that time of day when you work best. Your ideas are sharp, and your words are hitting the mark. You’re listening well and feeling relaxed. You’re in the zone.
Ping. A flashing notification pops up on the screen.
Buzz. A tiny sound from your phone rings. It’s pretty hard to keep concentration like this. Buzz.
Where was I?
Ping.
Not in the zone anymore. Your ideas are vague. Your words are off. What did you say? Your shoulders are tensing. You snap at a colleague.
Meanwhile, the distraction keeps on coming.
Ping. Ping. Ping…
Leaders are burning out.
Especially, right now.
We’ve got funds to raise, staff to support, partnerships to nourish, finances to balance, programmes to run, social media to produce, risks to manage. We are committed, so we make it happen.
At a cost.
Leading is hard enough. Half the fight is finding space to produce instead of constantly responding. When we carve out that space, we are where our teams need us: on the front foot, creating, thinking, reaching out, communicating, listening, leading.
Yet, emails keep pouring in. Problems are popping up. While many of us are working from home, the distractions only get bigger – especially if you have kids. Everyone wants your time.
At work, the more senior that you become, the more people want your time. Most folks don’t realise how heavy a leader’s load is, so they keep sending those emails and whatsapps. Well intentioned, the demands are relentless.
Ping.
Before long it starts to wear us down. We’re stressed. It’s harder to get out of bed. We drink too much coffee. We eat the wrong foods. Exercise slips. We lose our mojo.
Soon we’re burning out, and the consequences are dire. The people we lead suffer. The causes we fight for stall. Our teams struggle. We’re unhappy.
Slow is Smooth, Smooth is Fast.
The science is clear on this one.
We are not built to multitask.
Some people believe they’re good at multitasking. I used to. In reality, while some may multitask better than others, everyone is more productive doing one job at a time rather than juggling multiple tasks.
So, repeat after me: I cannot multitask.
Yet our phones and screens ceaselessly interrupt, distract and tempt us to multitask.
We sit down to finally clear the inbox and within minutes a chat box flashes. Someone asks for a moment of our time. We are in a meeting and phones are buzzing. Concentration is lost.
These micro interruptions break our flow, divert our concentration, and decrease the quality of our work. Plus, they never stop. Not surprisingly, they begin to burn us out as leaders.
I’m not generally a fan of military adages in work, but I love this one:
“Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.”
The idea is simple and incredibly powerful. It calls us to slow down and to focus, working deliberately on one task at a time. Only one. We are called to execute “slowly”, doing each job well rather than rushing through, or worse, bouncing back and forth between tasks.
Slow down. Do one thing well, then the next, then the next.
The results of a smoother approach build up. By the end of the day, we’ve achieved much more than by multitasking.
Peace of Mind while Working from Home
Productivity is a great way to reduce stress. This massively helpful little device comes from Caroline Webb’s book How to Have a Good Day:
“Productivity in 11 words:
One thing at a time.
Most important thing first.
Start now.”
Caroline Webb
Devastatingly simple, this is slow and smooth in practice.
So take control and make it happen.
Turn off the notifications and silence your phone. Schedule time to connect with teams. Meet their needs on your terms. Create the space to focus. Do one thing at a time. Just one. Sometimes that will be a creative new project, many times it will just be clearing your email. No matter the task, it’s the only thing you are doing. If you’re on email, stay on email. If you’re writing a proposal, keep writing.
It may take some time to get the hang of focussing like this, so watch for what distracts you. Then remove those distractions. Enlist your colleagues to help. If you’re working from home with kids, see if you can rota for some deep focus time.
Most importantly, don’t beat yourself up when you lose focus. Minds will wander, that’s what they do. Notice the distraction, have a little laugh and then get back to the job at hand.
I promise you will go home more rested, less stressed and happier. You’ll be surprised how much more you achieve too.
You won’t even miss those pings.
6 Comments
Simple and so true, thanks for the reminder and the clarity of your writing. And what a great quote from Caroline Webb as well.
That quote is so helpful isn’t it? Short of writing it on the wall by my screen, I’m trying to channel my thinking with it as much as I can. Thanks for your kind words on the blog friend and hope you’re well!
Indeed productivity is exactly one thing at a time that directly speak to setting priority which fuels your productivity and give value to your results.
What a beautiful and catching quotation.
It’s such a powerful and striking quote isn’t it? I’ve found myself coming back to it time and time again since I put this post up. I love how it brings together productivity and peace of mind in such a powerful little phrase.
Great read. My key takeaway is to do one thing at a time. Whenever I can do this, I feel I do quality work. My phone and social media cause me the most distraction. I love to tweet and follow up on trends and hashtags, but sometimes, I spend too much time and lose focus. In the past weeks, I put off my phone and throw it under the bed. I only come for it when work is over. I guess I won’t be able to do the same in an office environment.
I hear you Richard. It’s so easy for me to get just a little bit lost in my phone and have 15-20 minutes run away like that. What I try to do – somewhat successfully – is schedule my social media for 30 mins here or 30 mins there to give me time to engage and connect without it running wild on me. That’s where turning off the notifications helps me so much… but maybe stashing it out of view like you’re doing under the bed is the real trick here!