From Laura's Desk
Productivity

Interruptions: From Laura’s Desk – 1 February 2017

Quote of the Week

Circumstances
“Circumstances may cause interruptions and delays, but never lose sight of your goal.” –Mario Andretti

Musings

In February, we are going to be looking at interruptions. We’ll look at what causes them, how to deal with them, and how to get back on track.

To start the month out, though, I wanted to put forth an idea:

Interruptions are a choice.

But, I don’t choose to have someone [insert interruption]!

I can hear the protest now: you can’t control other people. You can’t control that Susie in accounting picked up the phone to call you. You can’t control that Bob stopped by your cube. You can’t control the 40 emails that have landed in your box in the past hour.

I agree.

But you can choose to allow them to interrupt you.

Reactions

There are some people who have reaction-type jobs. Someone whose job it is to answer phones, for example, needs to have the phone call to answer. Firefighters react to a fire or other emergency. That’s a good thing, to be interrupted, when you have a reaction-type job. Can you imagine a firefighter saying, “No, I can’t come to your fire right now because I’m busy with training?”

Most of us don’t have fully reactive jobs, though. Even the job we have when we get home from our paid job is not fully reactive.

Think about that: what would happen if you didn’t ever start making dinner until all of your kids were whining with hunger? (I know every parent out there is cringing at the thought.)

Yes, you will have to react when the dog is crossing her legs and barking at the door. You will have to react when little Johnny drops the bottle of pickles in the kitchen. But the majority of the tasks you have, both at work and home, are not reactive.

Why Interruptions Are A Choice

So that leads me back to my initial assertion: interruptions are a choice.

We can choose to be interrupted or not.

The interruption doesn’t come from the outside (or internal – more about that later) stimulus. It comes from our reaction to that stimulus. We choose whether to go in a new direction, or keep on with our original task.

So if interruptions are a choice, then we can head them off for the most part. More about that to follow this month!


That’s about it for this week’s edition. We’ll see what next week brings. Until then, be productive, be peaceful, and keep your balance.