Effectively Handling Interruptions for Increasing Productivity

One of the important things that comes up constantly when trying to improve productivity is how to handle interruptions. In fact interruptions can be one of the key enemies of being productive. Have you ever had this experience?

I have classified three key types of interruption and in this article I will be covering the first of the three. The first two of the three categories of interruptions should minimized if not totally removed, and the third type of interruption is actually encouraged!

The first type of interruptions are external interruptions that call upon us to live by other people’s agendas.

Phone calls, emails, knocks at the door, taps on the shoulder, text messages, phone notifications, etc. All of these methods of other people trying to pull your ‘attention’ to what is important for them and away from what is important/productive for you.

But is that what is really important for you? Do you really need to be attending to this right now? Is this something that can better be attended to later? Do I have a time and place scheduled for dealing with these types of interruptions?

Below is a short list of habits you can develop to better handle these types of external interruptions.

* Living more intentionally/practicing intentionality

An interesting thing about interruptions is that they can only be classified as ‘interruptions’ if you have intentionally scheduled that time for something of higher priority. If you haven’t scheduled that time for something else or sorted out your priorities there is nothing to interrupt! You can see an article on how to live more intentionally here: https://perceptionacademy.com/goal-setting-begin-with-the-end-in-mind/

* Valuing yourself and your timeIf you don’t value yourself or your time it becomes much more easy to live by other people’s agendas and to get distracted/interrupted.

* Purposefully practicing flow.

Flow states are innately pleasurable states of laser-like focus where you become uninterruptible and perform at your peak. Most everybody has been in a flow state/in the zone at some point in their life. When you learn how to purposefully practice flow states like we train you how to do in our Accessing Personal Genius/Self-Leadership course you learn how to handle interruptions, and when you learn how to effectively handle interruptions it reinforces your flow states.

* Saving checkpoints

Rather than letting external things interrupt you you can use external interruptions as a cue to ‘save a checkpoint’ in your workflow and as a cue to ‘self-interrupt’. This way you can more easily get back into your workflow after handling the interruption.

* Scheduling/blocking time for email/messages

Blocking time in your calendar at least one time per day for handling notifications/messages allows you to give yourself permission to ignore them when you are in a workflow. If you know you will get around to it later it becomes much easier to say “no” to them in the moment.

* Practice saying “no”!

How easily can you say “no” to others and activities? This also relates with self-esteem and personal power. The better you get at saying “no” the easier it will get for you to prevent interruptions and distractions. The power of disconfirmation is one of the prime ‘meta-states’ we teach in Neuro-Semantics (https://perceptionacademy.com/what-is-the-meta-states-model/)

Which are most interesting/pressing for you? What is your biggest takeaway? Leave your questions and comments here: https://www.facebook.com/perceptionacademy/posts/1507105552774933

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