In a previous post I explained why multitasking is impairing your productivity and efficiency and suggested turning off notifications on your devices.
I know this may be easier said than done. We don’t want to miss important calls from a prospective customer or an urgent question from a team member. So, how to go about it?
Here are 3 steps that’ll help you work around this problem:
- Ask yourself the question: What is the time of day with the least calls or disruptions? This could mean dealing with kids at home, answering calls from your team or customers, you name it.
- This time with the least disruptions is your focus time, time to work on your complex and important projects or tasks. Turn off notifications on all your devices or set them on flight mode, turn off everything that would distract you, and yes, that means TV and radio, and get to work.
Everything that will land in your inbox or on your voicemail will be attended to after your focus time.
- Last but not least, don’t allow anybody to “steal” this time from you (emergencies excluded of course). Inform your team, your colleagues, or your family that you’ll be offline for x-amount of time and available afterwards.
I know, it’s far more difficult with kids. But even with kids there are periods in your day during which they won’t need you. Maybe you have to be more flexible. Maybe you have to limit your focus time to 20 minutes instead of one hour. Whatever time you can carve out make sure you use it well.
Remember, there is no such thing as perfect, but there is always the best we can do.
Regine Albrecht-Strategies with A Kick 
I think I remember reading somewhere that neurologically it’s impossible to multi task. What your brain does is slot things in and out of your consciousness as you become distracted. Then you use time to ‘get up to speed’ with the switch and again when you go back to where you started. When I read that I was motivated to stay focussed. I’m all in for saving time
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