Datasheet

Part I: Preparing for Personal Productivity

I experience too many interruptions

to be productive

For many folks, a typical workday is made up of almost entirely of interruptions,

one after another. Interruptions to your work come in many forms:

 Telephone calls

 E-mail correspondence

 Instant or text messages

 Impromptu meetings

Regardless of what form they take, the biggest problem with interruptions such

as these is that they’re unplanned. Because they’re not scheduled, you have

a lot less control on how long they’ll take you away from the work you need

to be doing. Also, after a particular interruption is over, rather than getting

directly back to the work you planned to do, you may find yourself naturally

responding to matters raised during the interruption instead.

The truth is that, with the obvious exception of interruptions from your

managers, you always have a choice not to indulge in your workday

interruptions. All you have to do is find the motivation necessary to keep to

your stated work objectives and not drop everything you’re working on the

moment your computer indicates an e-mail’s arrived, the phone rings, or a

co-worker appears at your cubicle or office doorway. One of the best ways

to motivate yourself in this manner is to take inventory of all the time you

typically spend in responding to these daily interruptions as well as then

getting back to the work you were doing.

Be especially careful not to take small daily interruptions as excuses to get off

track and not attend to your other work. When you’re not yet at your peak of

personal productivity and you’re facing more obligations than you’re apt to

get done in a day, you can all too easily let such interruptions sidetrack you

until they reach the point where they become major diversions and additional

excuses for not being able to be productive at work.

I just don’t do all that well

with self-help systems

Another frequent reason for being hesitant about undertaking steps

towards personal productivity is that they normally come packaged as part

of a complete self-help system (often with a particular productivity coach

or guru’s name attached to it, such as the FranklinCovey Planning System

or Sally McGhee’s Productivity Solutions).