Reclaim the 23 minutes you lose every time you're distracted at work

Let's be honest here distractions kill your productivity and modern work is full of distractions.

Today, most work is done through a phone or a laptop. They’re the hardware of choice which allow us to work from anywhere and at any time. They’re often though not on our side they make so much noise and they are constantly trying to grab your attention.

To be fair, it’s not the hardware, it’s the software which makes up our digital workplace.

On a typical day, you will get notifications from; Slack, E-mail, LinkedIn, Salesforce, Miro, Canva…the list is endless. That’s only accounting for our workplace technologies and not things like Whatsapp or social media.

They are supposed to encourage and efficiently drive better communication and alignment. It's undeniable what we can now do in the workplace compared to what was possible even 10 years ago. This is the information age where it’s easy and cheap to obtain information, and we seemingly can’t get enough of it

It feels like we’re reaching a saturation point for all of this though. You may be reading this agreeing that you get too many notifications, and think you're only taking a few seconds to read it, but it takes a lot longer than that to get back on track

On average it takes 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get yourself back on track after being interrupted. This is according to a study by the University of California, Irvine. That means that in a typical working day even if you’re lucky enough to get distracted a few times, you lose an hour of work! That’s also generous in terms of the number of notifications, it’s likely way higher than this.

For large organisations, this could mean years lost every year down to notifications. Aside from the human element on employees.

What’s, even more, stark is we’re so prone to this now that even the possibility of interruption can have a negative effect on our ability to focus. If your smartphone or laptop is close at hand, your performance can be affected just in anticipation of that ping even if you don’t receive any messages or notifications.

It’s clear there is an issue here, but so what? Isn't this just a part of modern life isn't this frankly something that we've all just got used to what can we do about it?

You're 3 clear and easy ways for you to get more productive and get your time back every single day?

Declare notification bankruptcy

It's time to go nuclear on your calendar. Every single person reading this should turn off all of their notifications now. It’s time to start again and build from the ground up. You then have the opportunity to individually select which notifications are required. Much which comes your way, doesn't need to be acted upon immediately.? The average smartphone user in the US gets 46 notifications a day lots of us will be much higher than even that. Reducing that to 0 and then building again is your best bet. You will quickly realise that most of your notifications are purely baiting you to open the app lots aren't required to be acted upon straight away.

Calendar is key

The calendar shouldn't just be designated meetings that you have on specific days. It’s important to create time in there that is intentional for other activities. We all have a tendency to see empty space in a calendar as free time. We assume the person we're looking to communicate with is doing nothing, they’re waiting around for somebody to notify them for their attention to be grabbed. That obviously isn't the case we are all doing something at every point of the day so it's important to spend some time organising your calendar to reflect your true working and social day. It will ensure people respect if you’re at lunch or out for a run or whatever activity.

Clear your digital desk

Millions of us have spent time and effort ensuring that our homework spaces are as good as they can be. Those who are fortunate enough to have a designated space have crafted them to allow us to be at our most productive work best and they're all personalised to reflect that. Furthermore, we all enjoy it when that physical workspace is clean (I hope most of us do anyway). This same mindset should be taken into your digital workplace. You need to spend time decluttering by going to Google Drive and spend time organising files or leaving certain Slack channels that you've not been active in for a certain period of time. Another tip is making it clear which platform you prefer to be communicated on. Add a note to your email footer if you prefer Slack, it makes things much more orderly. Gartner says that professionals spend 50% of their time searching for information, and on average, takes 18 minutes to locate each document.

There is no easy fix everyone has a unique way of working this is difficult. Hopefully, the tips above or beneficial they will allow you to be less distracted in the workplace because the next time you hear a noise from your computer that could take you off track for a lot longer than any of us will ever fully understand