How to stay productive and avoid interruptions in an open office or co working space
My client works in an open co working space and was having difficulty figuring out how to be more productive during her days. She wanted to grow her business yet she was didn’t feel like she had any more time or energy during the day to take on new clients. After working with her for just a few weeks she pranced by my desk to tell me she had 5 AHA moments she just HAD to share with me! She had done the simple exercise I asked her to do and found so many simple ways to become more productive AND with higher energy and optimism every single day.
This week’s In Your Backpocket Podcast walks you through her exercise, her revelations and the execution of simple changes that positively impacted her distractions, interruptions and energy level throughout her days.
Listen to my 13 minute podcast here
First off, we had her do my Time Diary Exercise (password “backpocket”) because you can’t effectively work on your productivity or efficiency without honestly tracking how you spend your time every day. I do an entire podcast on my Time Diary Exercise. For now, listen to the podcast and I explain the simple exercise and why it’s critical to understanding how you possibly over or under estimate how you spend your time. In my Time Diary exercise we also track interruptions and distractions all day, which is often a huge eye opener!
This exercise gave her the 5 AHA moments I will share with you:
Be honest with yourself about what you spend your time doing all day. Do a Time Diary Exercise and be truthful about everything you do from the moment your eyes pop open to the moment you shut your eyes at night.
Recognize your visual and mental distractions. In my client’s case, she had to move her desk out of the line of sight from the front door and the front desk because every time someone walked in to the office, she looked up from her work. She tracked it in the Time Diary and was shocked to learn she looked up from her work about 10 times in 10 minutes!
Recognize the difference between avoidable and unavoidable interruptions. Once she realized that she spent a lot of time during the day chatting with colleagues at the coffee station, on her way to and from the bathroom she asked me for a script she could use that allows her to feel good about walking away from a conversation or a request to chat at her desk without feeling like a mean person or a bi**h. We practiced the easy script and she tried it immediately and it worked! I detail our conversation about chatty coworkers in this week’s podcast. In her case, as in most open office spaces, her interruptions were all avoidable.
Understand when your Peak Energy time of day is and work on your toughest tasks during this window of time. Are you low energy in the afternoon? For the love of Pete do NOT work on your toughest or most challenging client activities in the afternoon! The Law of Diminishing Returns is in full play when you work on demanding cognitive activities when you are tired and low energy. The reverse is true - when you work during your Peak Energy time of day, you get more done in a shorter amount of time AND the work itself is better. Better work product = better outcomes. So if you know you are not alert or high energy in the afternoon, get up from your desk, walk outside or around the building or better yet, work out! Come back to your desk refreshed, energized and ready to do a few tasks before the end of the day.
Set yourself up for success the next day, and the next day, and the next day. By learning that her Peak Energy time of day was the morning, she hyper focused on all of her revenue generating client work before lunch. Then in the afternoon she found an hour to work out and get energized. This allowed her to go into the evenings ready to wrap up her days in a much healthier mental state. Previously she was coming home exhausted, run down and unable to make a healthy dinner and prepare a healthy lunch the next day. Once she started getting outside or to the gym from 3-4pm she found the biggest advantage was that she felt much better about her evening routine and wanted to continue the healthy choices throughout her work week. This was an added and unexpected bonus of identifying her Peak Energy Time of Day.
If you have any questions about this subject or have ideas for an In Your Backpocket podcast please reach out to me at kathy@backpocket.biz Thank you!
Make it a great week!