Are you struggling with controlling interruptions that are hampering your productivity? This week, the ProductivityCast team looks at the issues surrounding interruptions and how we can do our best to mitigate and manage them when they happen.
(If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/052 for clickable links and the full show notes and transcript of this cast.)
Enjoy! Give us feedback! And, thanks for listening!
If you'd like to continue discussing managing digital notebooks from this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post).
In this Cast
Ray Sidney-Smith
Augusto Pinaud
Art Gelwicks
Francis Wade
Show Notes | Controlling Interruptions
Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.
None this episode.
Raw Text Transcript | Controlling Interruptions
Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast’s audio).
Read More
Voiceover Artist 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life, then you've come to the right place productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity. Here, your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17
And Welcome back, everybody to productivity cast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity, I'm Ray Sidney Smith.
Augusto Pinaud 0:24 I am Augusto Pinaud.
Francis Wade 0:26I'm Francis Wade.
Art Gelwicks 0:27 And I'm Art Gelwicks.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:25 Welcome to the show everybody. And we are going to today be talking about interruptions, and really about controlling interruptions. So what we thought we would do today is we would talk about the various types of interruptions that we all experience Francis was actually talking about before we started recording, that is those things that are external to us, not necessarily self interruptions, which we could call and define as, say, distractions. But more importantly, the things that are external things that we don't necessarily always have control over. And they interrupt our productive flow. And we need to be able to get back to being productive. And that's what we'll spend the second half of the show talking about, which is how do we how do we see ourselves back on to our productive pads for the day, when we are interrupted? What are the what are the major interruptions that happen throughout their work weeks,
Francis Wade 1:20
I'd say unexpected emergencies, things that I don't expect to happen.
Unplanned, actually, I'm dealing with one right now, I have my brakes on my car fixed, and it looks as if they didn't fix it properly. So it's feeling a little spongy. So I have to take, it's going to take I don't know, three hours, although today that I didn't plan on having the plan to work during those other be productive, longer waiting around at the shop to get the brakes looked at. So emergencies. And then there are there are people who don't realize that I'm in a particular kind of focus on. And they might just interrupt just, you know, innocently, but the effect is the same Nonetheless, the my productivity dips, and my goals don't get accomplished for the day.
Augusto Pinaud 2:13
You know, and I will add to what Francis just said, a little distinction between those emergencies, because they are what I will call the real emergencies. Okay, the ones that you there is there is no, you can control they happen. Okay, and those are one kind of a customer calling. Fine, you can control those. And the other ones that are Hello, the worst are the ones that are the lack of planning, okay, it's one now the other person emergency and they are trying to come to you to interrupt you and your own flow to make that also your emergency. Okay.
And they're different than you know that they're different from the customer. But they are at the end of the day interruptions, you know, they there is
there are problematic and for some people will there are kids in for interruptions. You know, I work out of work, and I work at home, and I work in many places. And well, sometimes you are with the kids, and it's a matter of trying to kids, you know, Mike, my kids know to interrupt if there is an important, but let's clarify that's important on their world, not our mind. So you need that's something that you need consistently tweak on work with them. So that way they understand really what the word importance, important means. So that way they interrupt, interrupt less or interrupt one is more relevant.
Art Gelwicks 3:46
Yeah, I'll go with the easy list. And the low hanging fruit ones, the the emails that you get the three off track the notifications that show up on your chosen mobile device, I the instant messages that up in the corner of your screen indicating something that you need to do the phone calls that come in, and the the all time favorite the drive by or shoulder touch, somebody walks up to you and says, Hey, I need you to do something, all those interruptions will throw you off track
Raymond Sidney-Smith 4:14
all around us out with my my worst interruptions that happened to me, which are technology failures, or they may be failures, but they're just something's not working right now. And so therefore I have to divert my attention to fix that technology issue. And that could very well be the pen ran out of ink to some, you know, software is now having some kind of bug or glitch. And it's not working the way that it should, which should be a productivity enabler, and now it's becoming a productivity inhibitor. And so having to divert deal with that equipment failure, it, you know, derails me and not particularly a bad one, which is that when clients call that is not a common occurrence. For me, most of my client communications happened via email. And so we're calling clients when necessary, but we primarily communicate by email with our clients, or through our client portal. So the client call is is a clear interruption, a good interruption, you know, I'd love to hear from my clients. But the reality is, is that that is that is it's it's so uncommon today. That it's it's it's it's an adjustment that I have to make from concentrating on what I was doing on screen, and then having to you know, field a phone call, either through a call desk or whatever. So it's a it's it's definitely an interruption in my world. And again, like I said, it's not a bad interruption, it just happens to be an interruption. And so great. So I, I've got a list here now of emergency and non emergency interruptions from Francis, as well as people not realizing you're focusing on a project. That's what I heard from Francis from a gusto. I heard children. And,
and then, art from you, I heard email, instant messages or any kind of chat clients, mobile notifications, phone calls, and then coffee clutching, you know, people walking up to you and wanting to have a chit chat. And then I had tech issues and client calls. So that fits into your phone calls issue. So we can kind of ignore that one. Because phone calls or phone calls. Let's try to deal with these kind of in that order, then and start off with how do you deal with emergency versus non emergency interruptions? And, and more importantly, when they happen? How do you how do you prepare yourself to get back on track with regard to let's let's start with emergency interruptions? Say the building fire alarm goes off? Or the brakes on your car are not quite working? Well, which you know, that's important. So
do you have a rubric in place for being able to deal with emergency interruptions?
Francis Wade 6:59
I wish I said I could say that I have some fancy, fancy triage method, I sort of do what agosto does, which is to prepare people around me for for moments when I need to be non not interrupted. So I think it's
if I think of it, I think I plan my day based on when I want when I can be interrupted. And when I can't. So I stopped from my needs first, I guess. And then if I'm in a non interrupted zone, I try to turn things off, turn off all the reminders on my phone, I might even turn off the phone. I don't get that many calls. But But I could do it. That let me turn off reminders on the screen pop ups, anything that might stop me, I closed on Windows, and set my stop me from staying in the flow state or doing deep work.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 7:53
And just so for just so for listeners, Francis, this isn't a non emergency situation.
So the fire alarm is not going off. This is just generally right. Okay, good.
Francis Wade 8:03
But when I still have the same, can I start with me first, that's that was my schedule first. So my intention is still pure at that point.
And when I'm in the flow state, or when I need to be not interrupted, then it's church, then it's depending on the emergency that's happening in the moment. And I tried to punt anything, that's not even the brakes. For example, for example, my wife had told me that the brakes weren't working, and she had just come back in, and she's safe, and I'm safe. That's not an emergency in the sense that I need to bought myself out of the flow state in order to deal with it, I can deal with it when I'm finished. It's not worthy of breaking my concentration. So but but there are decisions that have to be made, when I'm in that zone, I think all of my sort of
let's call them routines,
