Researchers for the University of California at Irvine found that the typical office worker is interrupted every three minutes and five seconds, taking up to 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back to work. Such outages consume 28 billion hours per year. David Karandish, founder and CEO of Capacity, an enterprise artificial intelligence company, told The Fast Company how people could improve time management skills and stop switch between tasks to stay focused.
CHECK THE CALENDAR
When you''re not sure where your time is going, he recommends, looks for a source of truth: the calendar. Check where you spend most of the day; If it''s in meetings, a concrete first step to spending more time on productivity is to evaluate each meeting and understand whether or not it could be discarded.
Even the smallest interruptions add up over time. In an interview with Catherine Webb, Hubstaff''s blogging director said that unnecessary meetings are one of the biggest time wasters in remote work. Since many companies started working from home for the first time due to the pandemic, many bosses are using daily check-in meetings to stay informed - some teams even have two or three meetings every day. A briefing consumes an hour or more that can be used for productive work, and the interruption makes it difficult for the team to focus on its top priorities. Two check-ins every day quickly adds up to 10 hours a week, which is a whopping 25% of the team''s potentially productive time.
STOP SWITCHING BETWEEN TASKS
According to psychologists, there is a state where, under the right conditions, you fully immerse yourself in everything you are doing. While it is an ideal state for difficult tasks to complete, it is difficult to achieve it consistently. Three practices can help: silencing internal stimuli (distracting yourself with thoughts); blocking of external stimuli (noise, children, text messages, phone calls); use mental processes, that is, train the brain in the tasks necessary for those tasks to become part of your muscle memory. For example, instead of writing "Call X," include details and write "Call X at 555-5555 to check on X issue." As you work towards a state of fluency, it helps set aside time from external distractions to calm internal stimuli and focus on those difficult tasks.
BE RESPONSIBLE
When you work in an office, surrounded by co-workers, the environment itself creates responsibility. People will notice if you are not doing your job. But working from home is another story.
While a flexible environment can lead to increased creativity, it can also create distractions and get bogged down in non-work-related tasks for others.
If you are having difficulty transitioning to work at home, you can set a schedule for all of your activities, or if you live with other people, you can ask them to tell you if they notice you are lazing around.
Experts advise company leaders to give their team members a little more flexibility as they all figure out how to be more productive and take better responsibility. Ideally, this will lead to more productive, loyal, and happy team members and a better business result.
Traducción: Valentina K. Yanes