Please Ignore the Ringing in your Ears
Peter de Jager is a provocative Speaker,
Writer and Consultant. His primary focus in on how we manage change,
technology and the future. In addition to speaking at conferences
worldwide, he's also written monthly columns for Municipal World and
Computing Canada. His goal is always to question what we
think is so, and in so doing perhaps open up new opportunities. If you'd like permission to reprint any
of Peter's articles, please contact him directly. You can contact him at Or sign the Guest
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pdejager@technobility.com
“Don’t answer the phone!” If Dr. Gloria Mark is correct, that little bit of advice could potentially increase our productivity by about 39% per day. Who is Dr. Mark? She’s a leader in a new area of study
labeled “Interruption Science” or “Attention Management”. For those of us who claim to be masters of the fine art of Multi-tasking? She’s our final exam – and we’re in for a bit of a nasty shock.
This is one of those areas of research, where our common sense can predict the findings, if not to the third decimal place, then at least close enough to make the research almost superfluous. Dr. Mark’s basic finding?
If we’re focused on a task, and then pull ourselves away from what we were doing to pick up the ringing phone, it’s going to take us a lot of time to get back to where we were before we were rudely interrupted.
How much time? The research suggests It takes somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes to get back into our zone of high concentration where we are most productive.
Some simple calculations on the back of a napkin… how many times are we interrupted during a normal day? At a cost of 20 minutes wasted per event? It doesn’t take too many rings, beeps, knocks and ‘Do you have a minute?” queries to quickly paint an ugly picture. According to Dr. Mark’s research, we waste about 28% of our effort/time/resources each day.
We know this. Everyone knows if we can get into the office before everyone else, we can get a ton of work done in a short time. Some of us know this so well that we go out of our way to arrive early; it’s what enables us to meet those insane deadlines.
The reason we must arrive early is that we lack the rudeness (discipline) it takes to remain focused during the day as we are besieged by people begging just a ‘moment’ (20 minutes!) of our time. It takes a high degree of impoliteness
(determination) to ignore the ringing phone, and almost a self centered superhuman concentration to disregard the pleas for attention from those around us.
You get the general idea. It is almost socially unacceptable to maintain a high level of concentration in today’s open office environment.
How to solve all of this and regain that orphaned 28% of our day? Stop allowing others to interrupt
us! Yes, I know - easier said than done – but not Impossible. Here are some baby steps.
1 – Turn off all the beepers and ringers.
If we don’t hear it ring – it doesn’t exist. If the computer doesn’t announce “You’ve got mail!’ then we won’t care. The world will not end. The voice mail will catch the messages and the inbox
will snare the impatient e-mail. They will remain there until we get to them in
our own good time.
2 – Allocate time for phones and e-mail.
Carve out some time slots during the day to take care of all the oh so important messages,
in all of the mediums, that we’ve been rudely ignoring. Two or three slots per day make sense. Morning, Noon and before we head out into traffic.
3 – Get a big ‘Do not disturb’ sign.
And learn how to growl and point to it wordlessly when people choose to ignore it… and they will – for several months – until you train them to honour it. Those who cannot learn to honour it will leave your organization and take up positions in 5-star hotels as cleaning staff.
4 – Learn to hide.
It is a law of the universe that in every large building there will exist at least one desk that very few people know about. When you need to be alone for an hour or so? Track it down, leave no forwarding address, and get thee hence.
5 – Don’t reward those who interrupt you.
This is important. They will believe that their interruption is important and if we give in to this notion, then soon they’ll be interrupting us whenever there’s a flood, 5-alarm fire or other crisis. Seriously, unless it is a crisis, the person who ignores our prominently displayed ‘Do not Disturb’ sign should be summarily drawn and quartered on each and every occasion until their remaining body parts learn that we’re really trying to get work done and would appreciate their co-operation.
6 – Learn how to turn people away.
There’s a simple phrase, a little bit longer than ‘No! Growl!’, that is almost socially acceptable in most organizations, it is,
“I’m busy right now. Could we reschedule this until later when I can give you my full attention?”
This usually works. When it doesn’t? We can always revert to my preferred, more optimal, “No! Growl!”
One final thing comes to mind… if we can avoid it? Don’t interrupt others. We can create a small cultural shift by respecting the concentration of others and refrain from needlessly interrupting those around us. Especially if there’s a big sign, with “Do not Disturb – Boojum hard at Work!” scrawled in a suspicious dark, and still dripping, red ink.
© 2010 Peter de Jager – Peter rarely answers his phone, he says it is because he doesn’t like interruptions – but we suspect it’s because he doesn’t like people. You can contact him – if you dare – at
pdejager@technobility.com
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