The average office worker is interrupted seventy-three times every day. And the average manager is interrupted every eight minutes.
Clients regularly ask me how to deal with seemingly constant interruptions in the workplace. Here are the three strategies I recommend, in order of appearance:
1. Minimize Unnecessary Interruptions
- Establish clear boundaries around the time you need for focused work. Close the door, turn off the phone, let your team know you’re offline.
- Get better at leading meetings and make sure they actually accomplish “the real work” of deciding what will be done, by whom and by when.
- Create times that you are fully accessible – office hours, if you will. Let people know when you want to see them.
- Establish regular meetings with key team members to facilitate enough communication that they won’t need to pop their heads in so often.
2. Accept and Attend
Give the interruption your full attention. This may sound counter-intuitive, but interruptions by their very definition have “got you”. Surrender. Giving someone your partial attention will not make you more productive, nor will it make them go away.
- Look, listen, focus, and attend to your interruption.
- Stop looking at your computer screen.
- If it’s an incoming phone call, try closing your eyes. They’ll thank you for it.
3. Embrace Divine Interruptions
Become fully present and available to the person interruption you. Every interaction is an opportunity to build a supportive relationship with another valuable human being.
- Take a deep breath.
- Make eye contact. Allow this person’s eyes to remind you of your own innate goodness.
- Look only for the good in this person. Listen carefully for the good in what he or she is saying.
- Count your blessings. You may be interrupted, but this means you are also: connected, valued, collaborating, communicating, and not least on this list, actively employed!
Why are they called divine interruptions? Because they are perfect, because they are beyond your control, and because you can make them magic if you Minimize, Accept, and Embrace them.
Thanks so much for this reminder. I was experiencing this today a lot. I remembered that the person asking for something was more important than what I had been doing. With this, it was a blessing, though I did leave work later than I had anticipated.
By: Margaret Peake on September 6, 2011
at 5:02 pm
Thank you for using the reminder and for sharing it with us! As a teacher I’d guess you get more like 8 interruptions per minute instead of one per 8 minutes for managers.
The part about leaving work later than anticipated, that would be the area to focus on #1 Minimize Interruptions by having more up-front communication about what does or doesn’t work for you. In the moment, there’s also the opportunity to say, “let’s continue this conversation at a later time when I can give you my full undivided attention.” Just an idea you can try out and see if it fits in this type of situation. It may or may not.
By: Lisa Peake on September 6, 2011
at 5:30 pm