3 Strategies to Deal Positively with Interruption

Interruptions intrude everywhere into your daily flow: marriage conversations (and other intimate activities if you have children at home), phone conversations, and your work flow.

Research indicates that it takes you anywhere from 10-20 minutes to re-engage fully with the task you abandoned when interrupted. So if you encounter 3 interruptions daily at work, that’s about one hour lost.

So when was the last time you had just 3 interruptions?

More like 33, right?

How well do you deal with these interruptions?

Implement into your work flow these three strategies for positively dealing with interruptions and watch as your sales increase with greater productivity and you get out of the office earlier to do what you love with those you love:

Listen

There is a line in the movie Pulp Fiction that goes something like this: “Are you really listening or just waiting to talk?”

As we really listen to each other, our eyes contact, our intellect and emotions connect, and we give full attention to the communication experience. An interruption-resistant bubble forms around us…if we’re really listening.

The common courtesy of listening isn’t so common these days with mobile technology’s immediacy ever in hand. A beep or ding intrudes with alarming regularity.

The path to extreme productivity lies in really listening to people and projects. When you listen, you focus intently and deflect interruptions.

Locate

Interruptions happen regardless of how well you listen. A client calls. A customer walks in. A team member has a question.

Locate your interruptions strategically. Establish appointments with yourself to return voice mail calls and emails. Create team meeting experiences and push others to jot down questions and bring them to that time.

When you must put out a fire, locate your place in the project or the conversation. Think of it as a bookmark, or dog-earing a page. Jot a post-it note. This simple act reduces your search time in getting back into the flow.

Leverage

Sometimes an interruption is fortuitous. It intrudes with new information that is directly applicable to a person or project. Leverage it in that moment with gratitude.

Or, the interruption brings knowledge relevant to another task on your to-do list. Locate it for easy reference later. Make a quick note for later leverage and return to the person or project at hand. By doing so, you keep your current listening engaged, locate it readily when you’re ready, and leverage the interruption, transforming it from pain to profit.

Sure, interruptions intrude multiple times daily. When you listen, locate, and leverage them, you implement your profitable actions with greater productivity while increasing sales so you get out of the office earlier to do what you love with those you love.

About the Author

Dr. Joey Faucette is the #1 Amazon best-selling author of Work Positive in a Negative World (Entrepreneur Press), coach, and speaker who helps business professionals increase sales with greater productivity so they get out of the office earlier. Discover more at www.ListentoLife.org.