#491  from Innovative Leader Volume 9, Number 9          September 2000

A Big Hole in Your Day
by Donald E. Wetmore, Ph.D.

Dr. Wetmore, from Shelton, CT, is a speaker and consultant on time management.  He can be reached at: phone (800) 969-377; fax (203) 9298151; email ctsem@msn.com; www.balancetime.com

We all have 24 hours in a day and 7 days in a week. That gives us a total of 168 hours per week. And the thing about time is that it can only be spent, it cannot be saved. There are only two ways to spend time, wisely or not so wisely.

The average person is working over 40 hours a week and I have found that most people lose about 3 hours a day or 15 hours a week in a black hole that consumes better than a third of the time we have available to be productive in our work.

Needless Interruptions

An interruption is nothing more than an unanticipated event. Interruptions come to us in two ways, either in-person or via the telephone. (Telephone would include all the electronic devices such as fax, email, beepers, pagers, etc.)

Interruptions are both good and bad. A lot of what you and I do on a daily basis is to address the good interruptions, those that are important. Examples of good interruptions are when a customer calls you to place an order, your boss stops by to inform you that you will be getting the raise, or a co-worker interrupts to show you how to complete a project in less time. These are all interruptions but they will lead to enhanced results. Indeed, a lot of what we are paid for is to handle those good interruptions. Those are not the concern.

What takes away from achieving higher levels of productivity are the bad interruptions, those that have little or no value.

Examples of bad interruptions are when a co-worker drops by to complain about the price of hay in Denmark (assuming you are not in that business) or some irrelevant, uninteresting topic or a telephone solicitor reaches you to try to sell something you don’t need.

If you we were to track and rate each interruption we experience during the day, (let A = crucial; B = important; C = little value; and D = no value), most people will discover that only about 20% of their interruptions are of the A and B class and 80% are of the C and D class. That, on the average, equals C and D interruptions wasting just over 3 hours a day in that time hole.

The solution? If you want to manage it, you have to measure it.

Measuring the Hole

I would recommend you run an Interruptions Log. Nothing fancy. Just take a pad of paper and place "Interruptions Log" across the top then just below, create six columns for: Date, Time, Who, What, Length and Rating.

During the day, immediately after each interruption occurs, log it in. Record the date and time it occurred, Who brought it to you, a word or two about what it dealt with, the length of time it took, and most important, your rating (A, B, C or D) of its importance to you.

Record this information for about a week to get a fair measure of what is really happening. It is a nuisance to log this information after each interruption, but it does provide valuable information. And, if you wait until the end of the day to fill it out, it probably won’t be accurate. Be brutally candid. No one else has to see it.

Plugging the Hole

Finally, go to each C and D interruption and ask yourself, "How could this have been avoided?" and start to take proactive steps to insure that it will not repeat itself.

For example, perhaps someone comes to you two or three times a day asking for information that they could have located on their own, just as easily. Unless there is an intervention on your part, helping this person to find the information for himself or herself, he or she will continue to interrupt you. It’s the path of least resistance. Help them help themselves; teach them how to get what they need on their own, freeing you from having to spend time on interruptions that waste your time.

All C and D interruptions will not be eliminated, but if you can head off, short circuit, and stop just a few and that buys back an extra hour per day, (that’s 250 hours over the next year, or the equivalent of over 6 work weeks) then you have carved out additional time for responsibilities that are currently being pushed back.  Another benefit: you’ll be under less stress.