Productivity Zappers! UGHHH!

by Skip Colfax

Imagine yourself sitting at your desk totally engrossed in creating a document you need to complete today. You’re totally focused and making great headway, feeling on track for getting the document finished. Finally, you’re being productive. It seems that many of your days are spent spinning, instead of getting your work done. As you’re working, a little flag scrolls up in the right hand bottom corner of your screen that says, “You have a new message.” It’s a small flag, not really alarming, not even colored brightly. What happens when that little, innocuous flag appears? Most of us stop what we’re doing and go into our email to see what the message is. Sometimes you’ll handle the need right now by making a phone call or simply responding to the email, but usually you don’t do anything with it because you don’t have time to work on it now, so you leave it in your inbox with the thought that you’ll come back to it later. Sound like you?

My point here is that you were working hard, being productive and, “in the zone” when that little flag distracted you and pulled you out of productivity in just a split-second.” Can you count how often that happens every day? It used to happen to me countless times every day. I was so tied to my email, I couldn’t get much else done. One of the best golden nuggets I got from “Getting the Edge” training, was reducing those pesky productivity zappers.

For most of us it takes 2-3 minutes of concentration to get into “the zone”, where we’re really being productive, and only a split second to get pulled from “the zone”. Even if we ignored the insidious little flag and went right back to our task, it would take us another couple of minutes to get back into the productivity zone. If that happens often enough each day, it’s no wonder we feel like we’re spinning rather than being productive.

Since I’ve completed the “Getting the EDGE” productivity training, my ability to stay in the zone for longer periods of time has remarkably increased! By removing as many of those annoying little productivity zappers from my environment as I could, I get more things done. As I implemented the EDGE system, I learned many new ways to think about my work and new ways to use Microsoft Outlook, but removing those distracters has enabled me to be much more productive, right from the beginning.

I miss the flags, beeps, buzzes and flashes sometimes, but getting so much more done each day motivates me to easily deal with my separation anxiety.