Enigin Advice

Stop Those Office Distractions

By Steve Hill

The Enigin office buzzes with highly interactive people.

Enigin’s technical bods, creatives, marketing men, web developers, Pas, and Directors, plus they are always interrupting me — generally for valid work reasons but sometimes just to chat.

For whatever reason they are welcome but they’re distracting, and their needs are often a far lower priority than what I need to work on at that precise moment.
Here are 4 methods I have used to keep them at arm’s length, so I can complete my work and then go and distract them!

1. Use Outlook’s Autoresponder. The “out of office” autoresponder in Outlook isn’t just for when you’re sick or on vacation. Use it to let people know that you’re busy concentrating on a project and can’tt respond to email or phone calls today.
2. Dedicate “Me” Time. Use Outlook to schedule “meetings” through the day that block out time to do meaningful work. When people try to schedule time with you, they’ll have to work around the hours you’ve dedicated to yourself. And when you think about it, isn’t that a lot better than the usual approach, which is letting everyone else have first pick of any times they like from your day? It’s your day - take it back.
3. Get fake meeting reminders. Likewise, if you get pestered with a lot of random walk-ins, be sure to schedule “meetings” in advance so you can, when your phone or PC dings, say “sorry - gotta run to a meeting!”
4. Wear Headphones. I listen to music and online radio at work, and I’ve discovered a fascinating aspect of human psychology as a result. If I close my door to play music through my PC speakers, the door is not a very effective barrier - people knock and walk right in. But if I don headphones, there’s some sort of perception that visitors are violating “private time,” and they’ll come back later.

Try these strategies – see if they work for you.

Now back to work – I got distracted writing this blog.