I've recently stumbled upon a great article by Steve Pavlina,
Please Don’t Interrupt. I think it's worth reading especially for business people, although the idea is nothing new.
We all know it's bad to check email, twitter, facebook or talk to someone while we work, especially if you have limited time to do the job. Some people think it's no big deal. But it is.
For example, imagine you are writing a plan for your new business. Your wife come and ask you something. You answer to her, and she leaves. According to the article,
"
...on average it takes them 23 minutes to get back to the original task, plus up to 30 minutes to return to the flow state so they can be fully productive again."
So, you will have to work extra time, probably 40 minutes or so. Imagine that you check your email once and that you visited your favorite forum once, while planning your business. That is almost two extra hours of work. At the end, you worked +3 hours, and achive results equal to one hour of work.
And you will probably need 20 or more hours of work for business plan. If you decided to work 3 hours a day and you get interupted 3 times each day, you will need +20 days, this is hard and you'll probably give up. Without the interruption, you will need 6-7 days.
How you can remove interruption from your life? In my opinion, there are four simple steps:
1.
Identify the interruption. You could write the "jurnal of interupptions." When someone or something interrupt you, write what it is. But don't include any emotions, just give the strait facts. Don't write 'story' about it, only write what it is. For example, don't write: "
I checked
email (again) becouse anytime my boss/investor/relative will send me the picture of..." Write: "I checked email."
2.
Analyze every interruption. You can do it with a simple question technique to determine the root cause of interruption. For example: "Why my wife interrupted me?" "Because she didn't know that this is really important to me."
3.
Create a strategy to stop the interruption. Write what you down on paper, or word processor: "How can I stop the cause of interruption, before it occurs?" Then write an answer. For example, if
interruption
is about your favorite social media addiction, "I can turn off the internet, or delete my social media account."
4.
Implement strategy, but do it one at a time. Don't try to stop all the bad interruptions immediately. That won't work in practice. You will stress yourself out. First master one of the harder interruptions, then another, and so on.
