Preventing Interruptions
The following two changes have made me far more productive both at work and when working on personal projects on the computer. They allow me to concentrate on what I am doing by limiting the number of interruptions throughout the day.
Check Email Once a Day
I saw an interview with Tm Ferris (author of the Four Hour Work Week) where he suggested that people only check their email once per day. I’m not quite there yet. But I now check my email based on the clock not based on how many unread messages I have. In fact, I don’t leave my email client open anymore. I open it to read and respond to email at 11am and at 4pm and then I leave it closed the rest of the time.
This seemed scary at first, but in reality it’s very liberating.
Set IM status as Away
I love IM. I love being able to ping a friend throughout the work day instead of trying to remember to mention it later on. I’m okay if they can’t respond, after all they are at work. But it’s less formal than an email and I know they’ll read it eventually.
Unfortunately, not everyone has this view of IM. Many expect an instant reply. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come back to my computer to see messages like the following:
11:01am hey, I have a question for you
11:02am are you there?
11:03am hello?
To properly set expectations, I’ve switched my status to “Away” at all times. This does two things: 1) for the people who don’t realize that work takes precedence over IMs it sets the expectation that I am not going to respond immediately and 2) for those people who are looking for an immediate answer that they could probably get elsewhere, they tend to look elsewhere instead of bugging me. Most of my friends know that I’ll get back to them eventually, so I’m not missing out on too much good stuff by setting an Away message. Instead, it’s there waiting for me when I get a free minute.
If you enjoyed this post, please share it or subscribe:
Stumble it!
- Digg It
- 
Subscribe