How to handle interruptions.

If you are talented and smart person, it is very possible, that your staff or co-workers ask you for some help very often. Undoubtedly, helping others can be very useful to your team and your company. However, sometimes you waste your time on these interruptions and you must be sure that you are making the best use of your time in each case.

You can disconnect your telephone, close your door and do your work without paying attention to interruptions, but very often your team productivity is more important for you, than your own productivity. You can win some part of the battle but loose the whole.

Your true productivity is based on your entire team not only on your work, especially if you are a manager or a team leader. You have a much greater impact on the productivity of everyone around you as your level of responsibility increases. Some interruptions become chances to help increase the productivity and effectiveness of your team.

You must differentiate the important interruptions from the time wasters, and deal with each of them in the right way.

You need to identify interruptions by type, importance and urgency. You should find out enough information about interruption to decide if it needs your urgent attention or not.

Sometimes just a simple interruption may take from five to fifteen minutes of your time to complete. The best way to eliminate from multiple interruptions is to set a regular schedule for visits.

You have to explain to your staff, that this schedule is for not urgent tasks, but if they have some immediate tasks they should talk to you at the very moment.

The best way is to setup several time blocks in a day and every interrupter would have a possibility to ask everything he is interested in.

Our product VIP Team To Do List allows team leaders to create, manage and send to do lists to team members by e-mail. As soon as you receive interruptions by e-mail, you can set them as tasks and set the priorities on each of them. Also you can set a reminder, so you will be notified about each interruption that needs your attention

See also: How to increase business management skills