Dear Lifehacker, I work in a workplace, environment and job role that is rife with distraction in the form of interruption. It is almost literally part and parcel of my job description, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. There isn’t really an opportunity to avoid distraction or tune out everything else than the one task at hand, because there is barely ever only one task at hand.
I’ve followed Lifehacker for a while now and have enjoyed making use of a lot of the advice. A recurring topic is the effect of focus on productivity and many ways of trying to achieve good focus in the workplace and at home. These are good pieces of advice, but they mostly deal with distraction from tasks that come from the self, our own wandering minds. That doesn’t work so well in my situation.
The three types of work I need to accomplish are time-sensitive data entry; ad-hoc time sensitive user and system support; and coding, research and testing. Clearly coding and testing are areas where I could use a focused environment the most, but that’s at odds with providing time-sensitive support and data entry.
My question is this: What techniques can you suggest for coping with a situation like this? The main issue is when I am working on one thing and I get asked to do something else urgently, the problem is getting back into what I was originally doing. At times I can be several tasks “deep”, being called on to do one thing after another until it become difficult to keep track of what was what.
I currently use the rule of threes. If I am doing a task and get called on for another, I just wing it. If there is a third task interruption, then I grab pen and paper and takes notes on what I was doing and where I was up to for each task, and add to it for any further task until I get back to the original task. It’s not bad but I think it could be better. Any advice? Thanks, 66biscuits
Dear 66biscuits,
I don’t envy you that workload — balancing immediate with longer-term tasks is something we all grapple with from time to time, but that sounds like a particularly difficult mix to manage. I imagine that some of our other technically-employed readers will be able to offer some useful thoughts based on their own experience (and we’d love to hear those ideas in the comments). However, a couple of things do immediately spring to mind.
Your basic approach seems pretty sound. My first suggestion would be to make the process of taking notes on what you were doing previously something you do every single time there’s an interruption, not just when you get to the third competing task. Right now, you’re essentially running two competing organisational systems: “I can remember this” and “I need to write this down to make sure I remember”. Having just a single approach means that you’re not ever going to be left wondering if you’ve worked your way back to the original task. It also gives you a detailed record of what goes on, which can be useful if you want to negotiate with management about making your workload realistic.
One potential challenge with that approach is that some people will be impatient if you hold off their “urgent” request while making notes on what you’re currently doing. However, that’s a reality that your colleagues need to deal with: if you are required to perform multiple tasks, there’s no way they can all get done simultaneously, and keeping track of them is just as essential to your job as solving your colleague’s problems.
While workplace politics can make this challenging, it’s also important to recognise that sometimes you’ll need to say no. That doesn’t necessarily mean saying “No, it will never happen”, but it can mean saying “No, I can’t do this immediately”. You mention that many of the tasks you do are time-sensitive, but obviously there are limits, and a point will appear where time-sensitive task A has to make way to even-more-time-sensitive task B. Making that apparent to people when they ask (rather than just juggling the tasks yourselves) can sometimes improve the situation.
Anyway, that’s my brief take: other time and priority suggestions would be welcome in the comments.
Cheers
Lifehacker
Evolve is a weekly column at Lifehacker looking at trends and technologies IT workers need to know about to stay employed and improve their careers. Got your own question you want to put to Lifehacker? Send an email to [email protected], and include ‘Ask Lifehacker’ in the subject line.
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