How to Avoid Interruptions and Get More Things Done

Done making my way through The 4-Hour Workweek (full review coming on Saturday). I filled up roughly 19 Moleskine pages, not so much with philosophical thoughts, but with the tons of practical ideas Timothy Ferriss shares.

One such idea relates to avoiding interruptions in your work life so you can accomplish more. Mind you, these aren’t necessarily profound ideas (you’ve probably thought of some on your own before), but they are good. Try implementing a few of these this week and see if they make a difference in your output:

Email:

1. Turn off the audible ‘new mail’ alert in your email program. While you’re at it, turn off auto send and receive functionality as well. You want to be in control of when and how you respond to emails (see #2 below).
2. Check email twice daily - Ferriss suggests noon and 4pm.
3. Never check email first thing in the morning. Instead, focus on accomplishing one major task before you do.
4. Set-up an auto responder email telling people your email schedule and giving them a cell # to call for urgent needs (see “Phone” strategies below).

Phone:

1. Have 2 phone numbers - your office (for non-urgent) and your cell (for urgent). Answer your cell every time unless you don’t recognize the number. You can use your voicemail as a gatekeeper, but check the message immediately and respond immediately if the call is, in fact, urgent. Put your non-urgent phone on silent and/or send calls straight to voicemail.
2. Check voicemail twice daily - On your non-urgent number, set up a schedule to check these messages twice daily.
3. Change your voicemail recording to reflect your voicemail schedule (like your email auto-responder).
4. Don’t allow conversations to drift. Get to the point quickly, but politely.

Meetings:

1. Steer people to the following order: email, phone, in-person meetings. If someone proposes a meeting, request an email instead, allowing you to use a phone conversation as a last-resort.
2. Respond to voicemails with emails whenever possible. Streamilne your email communication to avoid back-and-forth emails. Suggest actions with options… “Can we meet at 4pm? If not, please give 3 other possible times we could meet.”
3. Meetings should be held only to make decisions, not to define the problem. Do your brainstorming individually. To help with this ask the person requesting the meeting to send you an email with an agenda. Many times you can help them via email once you know the reasons for the meeting.
4. If you must have a meeting, set the end time. Never go into an open-ended meeting if at all possible. If you are not able to set the end time (if someone else sets up the meeting) request to attend a portion of the meeting and to move any items requiring your attention to the beginning.

Office Visitors:

1. Keep it short. If it is going to take awhile, ask for an email.
2. Give a time limit. “I only have 3 minutes to talk right now.”

Posted 08.07.2008

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