Workplace Ruminations

Oh the irony of it all…tools that were developed to save us time - e-mail, PDAs, the Web, instant messaging and the rest. Instead of saving us time and making us more productive, they actually cause significant downtime and interruptions. According to Jonathan B. Spira, Chief Analyst at Basex, and co-author of The Cost of Not Paying Attention: How Interruptions Impact Knowledge Worker Productivity, "unnecessary interruptions consume about 28 percent of an employee's day, which translates to 28 billion lost hours to companies in the United States alone".

Spira goes on to say that, "…at an average cost per hour of $21 (U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics June 2005), these lost hours cost U.S. companies $588 billion per annum". Are these interruptions important, urgent, or even necessary? Often times, employees don’t distinguish between the three options. The result, come in early, work late, work weekends or basically whenever the interruptions aren’t there. All of this blurs the boundaries between work and personal life and feeds the 24/7 mentality that seems to be the driving force that controls our daily lives.

So, let’s take a look at some strategies for preventing interruptions:

• Close your office door or put a do not disturb sign up by your cubicle entrance
• Turn off your email
• Have incoming calls go to voice mail
• Turn off your PDA, pager, and cell phone
• Schedule weekly meetings with your direct reports and with your boss
• Schedule time on your calendar for your work and stick to it!
  

Twenty eight percent of an 8 hour day is more than 2 hours of interruptions. Imagine reducing those interruptions by 50%--reclaiming even an hour of your day (or 5 hours of your week). How would that impact you? Just think of what you could accomplish with 1 hour of focused, productive, uninterrupted time every day. Now, move from "thinking" to "doing" and see what happens!

Productivity Pointer Ever want to number the rows in a Word document table? Here’s how: 1. Highlight the first column. (Slowly move the cursor (or mouse) over the top of the column where you want the numbers to appear. When the black down arrow appears, click the left mouse button. This selects the entire column.) 2. Click on Format, Bullets, and Numbering 3. Choose the Numbered tab. Select the type of numbering you want and the exact number with which to start. 4. Take off the number on the header row. (Highlight the header row. Click on the numbering icon once.)

Learning Opportunities

With more than 170 billion e-mails sent every day—that’s more than 2 million a second—is it any wonder that we feel that most of them are ending up in our inboxes? Join us for our Tips, Tools, and Techniques for Managing E-mail Webinar. You will learn about highly useful ideas on how to prevent cyber-indigestion!