The importance of time management in the age of distraction By Patrick Coleman, Black & Veatch
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hen I started using the Harvard® Planner in the early 1990s, I bought A. P. Martin’s book on time management (Martin, 1993). Recently, I purchased his updated edition (Martin, 2012) and noticed that not only had the subtitle changed but also new chapters had been added. Flawless Time Management changed from Practical Timesaving Tools & Techniques in 1993 to Managing Priorities, Deadlines, Meetings, Interruptions and Saying No in 2012. The new chapters discuss time bandits, such as meetings, email, interruptions and drop-in visitors. It also expands on key skills such as learning to say “no,” working with and delegating to colleagues, and using the Internet effectively. These revisions are in response to four changes in the workplace that have made managing time much more difficult: • Distractions – There are more of them. • Inboxes – They will propagate if not curtailed. • Task breakdown – Frequently we are asked to produce a product rather than to complete a task. • Etiquette – We need to be politely proactive when managing time.
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How then can we respond to these changes? How do we retain our humanity and invest our time wisely in this “Age of Distraction”? Managing distractions We need time to think, or we cannot do our job, let alone live our lives. If we are rested and energized and we focus our minds on one thing, we produce our best work. We can do more than one thing concurrently. However, it is a myth that when we “multitask,” we are as productive as if we did one task at a time. We would be more efficient if we worked in focused bursts (e.g., 25 minutes) with a short break in between (the Pomodoro Technique). When we know that a text message may come in or we are listening to a conference call while working on a report, pieces of our mind are allocated away from our main task. We work slower and less efficiently. We become like a computer with too many windows open that slowly grinds to a standstill. A distraction is a thing that prevents us from giving full attention to something else. It may be something external like a noise, or internal like a memory or feeling. As more offices become open plan
and space per employee reduces, we need to respect each other’s space even more because the buffer between us has shrunk. We need to be aware that our actions can sabotage our colleagues’ efforts to focus. We need to spend our colleagues’ time as wisely as we spend our own. For this reason, we need to minimize hallway conversations, avoid eavesdropping, reduce unplanned visits, keep quiet, do not use a speakerphone, do not have fragrances or spicy food in the cubicle, and use our inside voice. Distractions also come from within us, such as self-doubt, negative feelings, etc. We need to be able to calm or at least compartmentalize these thoughts that can eat away at our ability to focus. Otherwise, we may find ourselves physically in the office but mentally somewhere else. Conserving capacity to think There is a limit to how long we can concentrate. We have two “brains” – one is linear and logical and the other is nonlinear and pattern-oriented. If we only used the linear one, we would either have been eaten or died of exhaustion. Most of the time, we rely on our quick nonlinear, pattern-oriented brain. It is fast and requires less energy. It is correct enough times so that we stay alive, but it is not the brain we use for serious thinking. If we are distracted or tired when working, the nonlinear brain kicks in and we start to make mistakes. We need to give our linear brain a rest. In this age it means we need to “disconnect”, whether for a minute or a few weeks. We need to stop and breathe/ stretch, take a walk, take a power nap, take an evening off, or take a vacation without our phones. continued overleaf...
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