We received this comment below on the podcast (Episode 100), and so we're answering his question on dealing with distractions in open offices, to kick of the new year.
Hey guys, thanks for the content! I’d like to hear your ideas about handling extended busy times. I’ve been practicing GTD (poorly, but trying) for 4 or 5 years and firmly believe in the system. I’m a manager in what is, unfortunately, effectively an open office. I don’t currently have the ability to schedule my time which makes it extremely difficult to work on the important things without getting interrupted. In the next few months I’ll be moving to a separate office in the same building which will then give me the opportunity [to] put a schedule in place. In the meantime, and for others caught in the same sort of situation (think customer service for example) it would be great to get some tips on what might work in these types of situations. Cheers!Brent
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In this Cast | Dealing With Distractions in Open Offices
Ray Sidney-Smith
Augusto Pinaud
Art Gelwicks
Francis Wade
Show Notes
Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.
Ray—
Scheduling calls for most interruptive conversationsActive noise cancelling (ANC) headphonesLuxafor lightsSound barrier panels (Ray’s preferred panels: Versare SoundSorb VersiPanel)
Raw Text Transcript | Dealing With Distractions in Open Offices
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).
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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 0:17A quick note, before we get started with our episode today, for those of you listening, who are interested in engaging with others, listening to ProductivityCast, please find our digital community at WWW dot personal productivity dot club, sign up, and we'll approve you into the community, then find the ProductivityCast channel and join that you can come on and episodes, ask questions and engage with the ProductivityCast. Team and community. It's easy to sign up and it's free. Again, that's www dot personal productivity dot club. Thanks so much. And now on with the show ProductivityCast Episode 106 Welcome back, everybody to ProductivityCast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity, I'm Ray Sidney-Smith.
Augusto Pinaud 0:55 I am Augusto Pinaud.
Francis Wade 0:56I'm Francis Wade.
Art Gelwicks 0:58 And I'm Art Gelwicks.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:59Welcome, gentlemen. And Happy New Year, Happy New Year to listeners. This is our first episode of 2021. And hopefully this year will be a better year than 20, in the sense that after hopefully, you know, people start to get vaccinated in larger swamps and everything else like that, we'll be getting back to our normal lifestyles. And I'm looking forward to, you know, seeing people in real life again, very soon. And what we wanted to do today, is we got a listener question. And we thought, Well, why the heck not answer that listener question as a good kickoff to our new year. And so what we're gonna do is cover kind of the points of the big ticket, hiccup points that this particular listener had, and this is from Brent. And I'm just going to read the pertinent points of his comment. And so he says, that he has been practicing, getting things done for about four or five years, and he firmly believes in the system, he's a manager and works in an open office environment. He says, quote, I don't currently have the ability to schedule my time, which makes it extremely difficult to work on the things without getting interrupted. And so with that in mind, he's looking to hear what we're understanding. And Brent, you can always comment on this episode. And let us know if we got it right. But we're hearing is his strategies for dealing with distractions in open office environments, and really how to get the most important things done with that distracted environment with those interruptions happening. And of course, we do live in an interrupted in an interruption driven world. And we need to be able to have practices to be able to overcome those. And so with that, let's kick into the conversation and start off with dealing with distractions in an open office environment. And what are the practicalities there? What are the things that we can do to be able to help Brent and others who are in that situation, the
Augusto Pinaud 2:59distractions happens, and there is nothing that we can do. And it's something we have learned over the last year is that the distractions evolve and change. And when you think you control a set of distractions, and new ones will come, but this is still a game of breadcrumbs. And you need to understand as as in crais, distractions increase, what you need to do is better breadcrumbs for you. So years past, many years ago, I used to have a notepad, and there was a line and that notepad and basically I leave what was the last thing I was working on before I was distracted before I was interrupted before that phone caller that walk in into my office. And later that changed for an index card. And now it's just a tag into my system where if I get a phone call, if I get I picked the call and said give me a second and then write down I'm working on so that way as soon as that call. It's over regardless how long or how short it was, I can go back to that then and catch up or continue the trade and where he was even if that phone call means I now need to go and do something else or get distracted or get engaged into a different activity whatever that time, usually is that clue that I give to my to my own self is good enough, I can grab and come back to that activity.
Francis Wade 4:30So what Augusto suggested handles the I would say the individual side of the problem, but ultimately this is a social problem, right? The management of the organization has set the workplace up in a particular way that hinders the hinders bread's productivity. And ultimately, you know, he can do a bunch of things on his own. I've seen people wear headphones and put up signs and construct Plexiglas petitions, you know, all kinds of put on hats, all kinds of tricks and but these are ultimately social social barriers, there to tell people that I'm not to be interrupted. But that only takes you so far. Because if your management believes that you need to be available to be interrupted, as if you're an emergency doctor, from the minute you start work at 801, to the minute you leave you, you end at five o'clock, their belief is that you are infinitely interruptible, then ultimately, there's nothing that he can do with the headphones, they'll just tell him to get rid of the headphones. So this strikes me as a social problem. Primarily, it's a it's a, it's in the relationship between management and workers and the decisions that have either been made or not made. And ultimately, those will overcome any individual tactic that he could come up with. It's strikes me.
Art Gelwicks 5:58Yeah, see, now I'm going to disagree with you there on that, because I don't think it's entirely a social problem, I think what we're failing to take into consideration is that there are many roles out there, you just talked about one of them with the emergency room doctor, but even something less life valuable than that. Maybe I'm just working in a call center, maybe I'm working at a retail desk, that are designed to be interrupt driven, because they are customer facing, and they're client facing and when that client or customer wants help and needs help and needs contact, boom, it has to be done, then it's not an option to push them off and say, yeah, I'll get back to you in a little while. Those types of environments, it's extremely difficult to deal with what I consider what I consider secondary work, things that are not client or customer facing, but are still mandated to be done. And a common example, because I deal with call centers all the time is training. When when management has mandated that people working in a call center or working in that type of environment need to take training, the first question should be okay, when are you going to give me time to do that, because that's not something that can be done in five minutes segments around customer needs and customer interactions. It is a social challenge, but it's more of a managerial challenge, because they do have to recognize the fact that there is some work that cannot be done in five minute blocks. But even more, so that'll get referred to well, the customer still needs to be handled first. So as the person who's having to handle or deal with those incoming interruptions, I think it's really more important for us to try to help them identify ways to deal with that rapid START STOP of work. It's a it's a constant thing. I mean, the example I give to people of what it's like working in these types of environments,
