4 Success Saboteurs & How To Capture Them - Part 2
Author: Steve Little12 Apr
The 2nd Saboteur
Last week I introduced this article series and the 1st Success Saboteur, Multitasking.
I heard form a fair number of people throughout the week about how they could really identify with that one.
Here is the next one:
Distraction & Interruption:
Whether you work in a busy corporate office space or at home on the dining-room table, you are subject to a wide variety of distractions and interruptions. In the office, coworkers stop by to ask a question or impose their coffee break on your schedule or calendar. When working from home you can become subject to children coming and going, pets needing attention, package delivery or just the call of the coffee pot right in the next room.
The most pervasive distraction and interruption by far is email. Before I recognized it I have been known to hit the ‘Send/Receive’ button a hundred times or more in a day. It was almost like my entrepreneurial mind was subconsciously hoping to be interrupted by another new project opportunity to hit my inbox.
Those of you who have worked with or around me for any length of time know I am always up for taking on a new project.
I read a productivity study some time ago that reported that with each interruption you lose between 20 and 40 minutes of productivity. WOW!
The essence of the study was that it takes your mind between 1o and 20 minutes to “ramp down” for the shift in attention the interruption caused and another 10 to 20 minutes to ramp back up to productivity on either the original or a new focus.
With that little tidbit of information you can imagine that 3 or 4 interruptions can cost you an entire day of productivity and rob you of your success edge.
Take a moment to reflect on your week.
How many instances of distraction or interruption do you see?
Multiply by 20 minutes each and consider what more you might have accomplished if you had that time back.
Stay tuned. I will cover the final 2 Success Saboteurs on Monday and will move on to telling you what you can do about them before the end of the week.
Now that you are aware of them, maybe you would be willing to share how do these first two success assasins show up in your day.
I welcome your coomments. Subscribe to the feed for this blog and you be automatically notified when I post something new.
Gratefully,
Steve
PS - Watch too for an update on the forthcoming hit movie, The Shift. The production team is traveling and filming extensively this and next week.
2 Responses for "4 Success Saboteurs & How To Capture Them - Part 2"
This one has been a killer for me as well. After reading the 4-Hour Workweek though, I decided to set my email up to auto-download emails periodically so I don’t have as much of the urge to hit the Send/Receive button (usually only do so if I need to get something out ASAP or am on the phone and expecting to receive something important ASAP).
I have seen my productivity go up just by putting a 15-minute delay on send/receive. I’m probably going to keep ramping it up more and more now that I understand a bit more what’s going on from your blog post.
Thanks for the comment Chris. Yes this one gets a lot of people. I like your idea. I have found that once I stopped checking email but once or twice a day for a week or so, I am no longer compelled to do so…
There is a saying, it takes 2 weeks to break and old habit and create a new one.
That has been my experience.
Steve
PS - I appreciate what you are doing with your site, http://www.Spiritual-Short-Stories.com. I will post and link to it later this week.
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