Time Management – Batch Your Interruptions
Anything that makes you stop doing any of your A Priorities should be considered an interruption. Your goal during any working day is to get as many A Priorities done as possible; the activities that stop you from doing A Priorities must be controlled and tightly regulated to do as little damage to your productivity as possible.
I'll list 5 tasks that are part of your day and show you how you can limit there impact on your productivity for the day.
1. Checking e-mails
Limit this addictive disruptive habit to 3 snorts a day, notice the subtle sly reference to a drug habit, for those new to this page, one of my favorite targets for Time Waster Of The Year is e-mails.
2. Returning phone calls
Yes, your phone, cell and landline MUST at times be turned off
3. Receiving phone calls
Yes, your phone, cell and landline MUST at times be turned off
4. Reviewing and receiving real mail, paper
5. Written responses to co-workers, pre set responses to outside correspondents
These are just 5 interruptions that can help destroy a day's productivity and results. Instead of allowing these 5 activities to stop and restart your day up to 10 times or more, lets batch this group of interruptions in one time allocation time block, allowing 10 to 20 minutes for activity, for a total time block of 1 hour 15 minutes.
You will be able to accomplish all 5 activities within one time block and reduce the times you have to stop and restart by a factor of 8 or more, a huge savings to you in time and a major reduction in stress. Another advantage to putting these 5 tasks in the same time block, you can now "play" with the time allotment, using unused time from a task that took less time to complete and ad that time to a task that took longer to finish than originally thought.
To gain the most from this technique, try the following:
Always start this time block on the hour, use it as the "start" to a fairly fast paced time block, I always try to beat my record, get as much done as I can in the shortest time frame as possible. Believe it or not, you can actually turn these time wasters into fun activities.
Be fanatically strict about ending this time block on time. If you allow these time wasters to win, take more time to do than you had allotted, they win and you lose.
Practice makes perfect. Keep the same grouping of activities together in the same time block; you will get better at getting more done in less time if you keep them together.
Do as many "mini tasks" as you can during this time block.
Schedule this time block into a time frame where you are more likely to be interrupted, its easier to keep working through these kinds of items, housekeeping items, than higher Priority tasks.
Be sure to continue this routine for at least 10 tries, 10 working days to give yourself and this technique a fair trial.
We teach this in our seminars and it's in the Power Time System. The feed back from the participants in the seminars and from the users of the Power Time System is unusually high.
Be sure to give this one a shot.