According to researchers, even a few seconds of momentary interruption can ruin your ability to complete a task. Interruptions can come in various forms, such as receiving a text message or the fact that a colleague just walked through the door and interrupted an important conversation. Such distractions can prove to be quite disastrous for professionals in all fields.
Here's the list of top 10 distractions at work and how to avoid them:
1. Receiving messages and calls
Limit calls to after you have an hour of going through your list for today. Calls from colleagues asking for help can literally suck your energy and time. Unless it's urgent, or your actual job is to pick up the phone you're better off delaying all calls till the afternoon. You can check your text messages every hour or so to make sure it's not urgent.
2. Incoming emails
The dangerous thing about email is that it consumes your time and energy, yet it's not YOUR to-do list. If you think about it, reading emails before you're done with your priority tasks makes you do what someone else wants you to do, it's their to-do list not yours!
3. Pop-up chat windnows
Leave chatting till you have time for it. While it's healthy to be in touch, it's counter-productive to be accessible through chat applications when you're not available. Disable chat after one hour of your arrival to the office. You will have enough time when you're done from work and it will feel great to check all the tasks on your list before you head home.
4. Talkative Colleagues
Try to schedule 10 minutes in the morning to have a chit-chat with your colleagues early in the day so that you can have that done and start tackling your job tasks.
4. Snacking
Eating 5 times is way to go but if you have to leave your office 2-3 times in order to get food, you will have troubles concentrating. If you must eat at the office, get snacks that are ready to be eaten from home.
5. Coffee breaks
It is not recommended by most doctors to have too much coffee whether you're working or not but it gets worse if you have to take coffee breaks. Just think about the time spent thinking about getting that cup of coffee then the time spent in the kitchen, and after that of course the time you spend flirting with that perfectly made caffeinated drink. That should take a minimum of 10-15 minutes not counting the time spent chatting with other colleagues who happen to be in the kitchen as well. Do the math if you do this 3 times or more!
6. Smoking breaks
Again, think about the time spent smoking in addition to the time spent socializing before and after. Now multiply that by the number of cigarette breaks you take.
7. Social- networking websites
The best rule is, if you're not looking for highly important information or trying to connect with someone you can't call because you don't have his/her number then save it for when you're done working.
8. Thinking about personal problems
Who doesn't have personal problems right? We all do but these problems are not going to be solved just by thinking about them at work. If you don't plan on adding another problem to the list, try to think of your problems as items that you leave at the doorstep of your office everyday you walk in. It might help to actually write them down on a piece of paper everyday and leave that paper outside. It will help you unload some of your worries before you start working.
9. Meetings
They are part of your work but if you let them eat up your time you'll end up frustrated. Try to schedule meetings in your down time instead of early morning if you can. It will give you more time to work on your to-do list and act as a break from work when you have one or two meetings later in the day.
By Shaden Abdulrahman
