On March 10th clocks roll forward an hour for Daylight Savings. We lose an hour. (Damn, where did I put that hour?!?! Daylight Savings stole an hour from me! Well, didn’t your mother tell you not to leave an hour lying around in plain sight where anyone can grab it?!?!).
Now, Daylight Savings didn’t really steal anything from us. When you wake up Sunday, you didn’t lose anything; there are still 24 hours in each day. But there are real time bandits in our day. According to Edward Brown in his book The Time Bandit Solution, he states that interruptions waste 40% to 60% of employee’s work time. And they result in restarts, momentum loss, do-overs and what he calls “distress manifestations” such as irritability, mental fatigue and stress.
Today’s workplace often has an “interruption” culture. Everyone thinks it’s acceptable to interrupt your work without thought. And, interruptions are so common and acceptable that some of us contract “interruption addiction” welcoming interruptions, needing them to get through the day, making us our own worst time bandit. We often put others interests above our own deadlines and workloads. We answer emails and text messages instantaneously. We think our time belongs to everyone else at work. Even though for some positions this actually might be true, there is still things we all can do to guard our time from time bandits!
1. “Time-Lock” an hour a day. Block one hour a day marked as “busy” on your calendar. Pick a time that is your most productive time of the day (e.g., if you are a morning person, do it in the morning). Discuss the time with the people you work most closely with – supervisor, peers, direct reports, etc – to make sure it works well for them as well and to ask them to respect your time lock, only interrupting you in an emergency. Remove anything that you know will distract you (and make you your own time bandit) like cell phones, music, email, etc. Then, use your time lock wisely – plan the work ahead of time, then work the plan.
2. Set up “Batch Processing.” Batch-processing is an old computer term where you group similar repetitive task. By doing this we can save time, develop work momentum, and get things done. Look at what you have to get done today. Group similar tasks together. Then, get all those tasks done before moving on to the next group. This is also called “single-tasking”. By keep our brain focused on the same or similar tasks instead of jumping around, we become our own assembly line.
“The bad news is time flies. The good news is you're the pilot." ― Michael Altshuler
“Time is what we want most, but what we use worst." ― William Penn
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