There’s a reasonable chance that before you finish this article (in 70 seconds from now) you will be interrupted. Although we have found our way to tolerate interruptions, I believe…
Hold on.
My text message just dinged. It’s my buddy with Cowboys tickets for next Sunday.
I’m back.
A recent study found; people get interrupted every eight minutes. In another study specific to task interruptions, people were interrupted on average 11 minutes into a task. They were able to get back on task 30 minutes later, if at all. Translation: you and I are interrupted about 50 times per day. That means that you…
Hold on, it’s the home phone.
It’s Nordstrom’s make-up counter calling to tell my wife the new Lancôme night cream is in. FABULOUS!
I’m yours again. Where was I?
Oh yeah, interruptions are slowing us down. This is not news but it seems to be largely ignored in our world today. We allow the interruptions and somehow, at the end of a day, wonder why we are so exhausted while feeling like we accomplished less than we should have.
Interruptions last five minutes in a typical day. If you do the math, that’s up to four hours or 50% of every workday. But get this, researchers found that 80% of interruptions were rated as “little or no value.” We’re being sucked into the black hole of interruptions and we don’t even know it.
If there’s one thing that…
Hold on. My daughter needs help on scanning a photo.
I’m back.
I forget the “one thing” I was going to say, but I bet it was good.
Anyway, if you add up all the little or no value interruptions, we have about three hours of every workday wasted. (The phone just rang, I’m ignoring it).
This means that every person wastes about 744 hours every year on interruptions.
Multiply this by the number of people that you work in your company.
10 employees = 7,440 hours wasted.
100 employees = 74,400 hours down the drain.
1,000 employees = 744,000 hours in the “little or no value” abyss.
10,000 employees = 7,440,000 hours of a major corporate disease.
Interruptions are a drag. They are a drag on execution, efficiency, productivity and even mental health. Get this; frequent email interruptions cause a drop in IQ two and a half times greater than the drop in IQ from smoking marijuana. You know it’s bad when HR breaks out the bong.
Listen; before I get interrupted again, the point is to take control of your time. Happiness in the Age of Speed has a lot to do with how you manage interruptions. Turn the email dinger off your PDA and computer. Turn off your cell phone while you are supposed to be present with that person sitting across from you or talking with in your car. Improve one thing each day until I visit your email box next week.
Whew, we made it without one last interrup… RING, RING.
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