As I was sitting here at my desk I got to thinking about productivity – and specifically busy vs productive because I have a confession.
As much as I help my clients run more efficient businesses and teams, some days I am the cobblers kid and today happens to be that day.
I was silently giggling to myself when I realized just now that it took me 45 minutes to send one email. Sure, this email included a task transition spreadsheet but let’s be honest. This email should have taken me 10 minutes max, so why did it take me 45?
Because I got all the darn dings going off. Which is ironic given that my rule normally is when in a sprint all dings are off but for some reason I ignored my own rule and shockingly self interrupted myself when I remembered something I had reminded myself to do earlier in the day that I didn’t write down.
So finally in frustration I followed my own best practices and got down to business and what do you know, done in a flash.
So that got me thinking about research I did when I was first dipping my toe into the wild world of productivity. Buckle up… these numbers are shocking.
It has been scientifically proven that humans cannot multitask and for every distraction it takes ~25 minutes (23 minutes 15 seconds to be exact) to get refocused according to Gloria Mark, who studies digital distraction at the University of California, Irvine.
Distractions don’t just eat up time during the distraction, they derail your mental progress for up to a half hour afterward (that’s assuming another distraction doesn’t show up in that half hour).
In other words, that “30 seconds to check LinkedIn notifications” isn’t just 30 seconds down the drain. It’s 25 minutes and 30 seconds.
What makes it even worse is that in today’s digitally overwhelming world, not being interrupted seems like a pipe dream.
Did you know that the average person gets interrupted once every 8 minutes (and half of those are self interruptions, hello social media ding)!
That ends up being around 7 times an hour, or a staggering 50-60 average interruptions per day! Sweet baby kittens that stat still blows my mind!
When you factor in that the average interruption takes 5 minutes to deal with, you only get 3 minutes of productivity out of every 8 minutes we work – or in other words, we’re spending around 4 hours of each working day being interrupted.
The real nail in this coffin is that 80% of interruptions are unimportant/not urgent.
So in other words, if we were to somehow cut out all of the interruptions that didn’t really matter – like when somebody shows you that funny meme – then you’d be saving precisely 3 hours and 12 minutes per day in lost productivity!
If you want to see a truly shocking number, when you look at your business and your team, take a moment to appreciate how much 3 hours and 12 minutes per person, per day is costing your business, your team, and your bottom line.
Oh and let’s not forget what the even bigger “life” cost is to attention distraction: Gloria’s research has shown that attention distraction can lead to higher stress, a bad mood and lower productivity.
So now that I am such a harbinger of joy … oops, I speak the truth ha, here are my favorite distraction reducers and mitigators.
First, you’ve heard me talk about this before but here we go again, Admin days. Pick a day, any day, where you work ON your business. No meetings, no distractions, just deep work moving your business forward.
Second, sprints. 20 – 30 – or even an hour where you work on one thing with blinders on. *you can work on multiple things IF they are all the same category of thing. What I mean is you can do an hour of emails, or web design, or contracts for clients if they are all the same “energy” and related otherwise you are back on that context switching, inefficient merry-go-round.
Third, turn it off. I know this one seems too simple, but let me tell you. Turning off your phone, signing out of slack, closing your email, and just focusing on the task at hand can have massive dividends.
Last but not least, distraction triage. Something pops in your head, throw it on a sticky note for later and keep on trucking. I know it is tempting (trust me I did it THREE times just this AM) to stop what you’re doing and go do xyz now that it popped in your mind but as Gloria said, most interruptions are not life altering, emergent things we need to do now so take a beat … write it down and then decide once you are out of your sprint if it should be something you should do, you can delegate, delete, or heck defer some more.
Alrighty, that’s it for this week. Let me know if the busy bee has stung you recently and which one of these distraction dissipators you are going to give a go.
Until next time.
Lauren
