Welcome to reducing distractions. Of course, from Captain time. My name is garlin Colson. I'm a time management speaker, consultant and coach. I've been studying time management for over 30 years I started primarily for myself, but then I ended up helping many others, many other clients, many other students. I created this free online course to help you reduce distractions and gain more focus.

You can pause this course at any time, come back to it, log in and review it again and again. Please invite others suggest to your company that all your staff take the course and do share it on social media. So what will you learn during this course, during this course, I'm going to teach you why distractions are crippling your productivity, how to take control of your time and work environment to prevent interruptions. How to Reduce the distractions to help you gain more focus. And unlike a lot of other, you know, little value free online courses, I'm going to give you specific techniques to deal with 10 of the worst distractions most people face in their workday. My goal is to totally transform your work day experience with this course.

This course these techniques will work whether you work for a fortune 500 company, or run your own business from home or anywhere in between these, these techniques will work for you. If you are an employee and you're wondering if this course will benefit you, employees who are more effective in their work are less likely to be get let go. They get more raises you have better chances at promotions and just being able to get your work done more quickly reduces stress and makes you feel better at the end of the day. If you're an employer wondering if this course is of benefit for your employees, this course will give your employees improve productivity, improve work quality, less mistakes, greater team morale, and less stress and sick days. So let's talk about these distractions. You know, why did distractions cripple your productivity?

The workplace is full of distractions, staff can interrupt each other email coming in music, apps, mobile phones, phones, clutter around the desks, and even bosses can all contribute to people being distracted from their work and not getting full focus. Now, why do we want to reduce these distractions? Every interruption you get everyone breaks your focus where you were, you might have been deep in thought almost had the solution to the problem. You're looking for and bang, something interrupts that and it can take you 20 to 30 minutes or even an hour or longer to get back to the same level of productive thinking after each distraction. So if you were distracted many times every hour and most people are, you were really only working at a very small fraction of your potential. World Class performance needs world class focus.

Think of your favorite hockey team, they make it to the Stanley Cup Finals, your star player gets a breakaway on goal. He doesn't stop and answer his cell phone on the way to the goal. If you're going to the symphony, you will notice that the cellist is not sending text messages during the performance because we all know that you know that you need a higher level of concentration to perform well. We know we shouldn't be texting or using our phone while we're driving, because we need a better focus. So to get that level of focus, you have to stop being distracted. It's really that simple.

Now, you might think, Well, I'm not really being interrupted all that often. It just happens occasionally. And I think you're being interrupted a lot more than you think. I've sat in people's offices. I've watched how many times they're interrupted, I've tracked it for them. And they're usually appalled when I show them how many times they're interrupted.

So I'm going to prove it to you. I want you to go to toggle calm to ggl calm. It's a free web based online tool. I want you to track your time for one week and record every time you get interrupted and have to work in something different. You'll be shocked at how many times you're interrupted and how little uninterrupted time you have. So let's talk about 10 of the worst workplace distractions and what you can do about them.

So we're going to talk about email, we're going to talk about the telephone. We're talking about your mobile phone, social media, computer programs, apps and tabs, music, your co workers, staff if you're a manager, and we're going to talk about even how managers can interrupt you and your physical work environment. So let's start off by talking about how to reduce email distractions. So the problem with email is that there's a steady stream of it, it arrives throughout the day, and every time it arrives, we get a notification. And it's human nature to want to check just in case it could be something important or urgent. So every few minutes, we break our world class focus, and we check to see what the email is.

And most times it's just a newsletter or It's just junk mail, it's usually not that urgent. So a better approach for email is to set a target time for applying emails. So I tell all of my clients, I will reply to their email within one business day, even if it's only just to say, Yes, I got your email, I'll, you know, I'll put a proposal together and get it to you or I'll have to do more digging and get back to you. But I always reply within one business day. Then I turn all my automatic checking of emails off. And I also turn off all my email notifications.

And Microsoft Outlook is particularly insidious for this because even if outlook is closed, it will send you still to your desktop, it will send you notifications, so you have to turn those off to so I turn off all notifications so I don't get a notice when there's a new email coming in at all. And I only checked by email once or twice a day at set times I deal with all of it then even if just through apply that I'm going to look at it and get back to them shortly. And this keeps email from continually interrupting All of the other high focus things I'm doing. Don't keep your email program, open outlook, or Thunderbird or Gmail or whatever it is, don't keep it open while you're working unless you have to send an email as part of that project you're working on, don't have a tab open, you know, if it's if it's a webmail like Gmail, you want to make sure these programs are actually closed.

Because even if you've turned notifications off, you might see a little number Oh, there's a new number on there. That means there's another email that's coming in. So you want to get rid of that temptation to go and check and just see what it might be. Remember that your email still all gets dealt with, you're still going to spend the same time on it, but you're going to work on it with a focused block of time instead of piecemeal throughout the day. And a focus block of time where you deal with a bunch of email at once is a lot more efficient than dealing with one at a time as they trickle in. It's a lot more efficient.

I also have a zero email inbox. course I'm putting together and coaching as well. So contact me if you'd like help getting your email inbox to zero every day. Now, let's talk about some telephone distractions. So telephone distractions are tougher because when the phone rings, we pretty much feel we have to answer it and, and it could be very important. It could be a sales call, it could be something like that.

So here's a few techniques for dealing with phone distractions. You could have a set block of time for making your outgoing calls in a day, or for people to call back. When you talk to people suggest that they call back maybe between two and four, say best time to retreat to or four but call anytime if that works better for you. So by doing this, you shift even if you can shift 30 40% of people to that better calling time for you to that block of time, you'll find it works a lot more a lot more effectively. Also set maybe peak focus times perhaps one hour a day where you need to focus on something really critical, you got to get that budget done something that's got to get out a major client project that's got to be finished. So pick an hour a day, I call it a Power Hour where your phone calls, go to a colleague or go direct to voicemail.

You can also schedule phone appointments to reduce interruptions as well. So schedule you know times with people rather than having it just willy nilly and playing voicemail, voicemail tag telephone tag, going back and forth a whole bunch of times. I also recommend use alternative non interruptive ways to communicate such as email or other messaging apps. So if the information can be sent by email, or messaging app or other systems or put as a comment and a task management system, I do that instead of phoning them, but of course there's times when the phone is the best way to solve something, a five minute phone call can sometimes save five or 10 emails going back So you know, you pick and choose the phone is a useful tool, but trying to set it so it doesn't distract you all the time is important. I use a tool called schedule once to let people book call times with me.

So I work with people around the world. So they're in many different time zones. So it's often difficult to find the time that works. So I might say to them, Well, how about next Wednesday at 9am? My time, and then still come back and say that doesn't work? Well, how about Thursday at four, and that doesn't work for me.

And we go back and forth. It's really difficult. Schedule once connects with my calendar, in my case on my Google Calendar, but I believe it's scheduled, it connects with Outlook as well. And it automatically knows when my times are and I can also define what blocks of time do I want to schedule and half hour chunks? Do I want a 15 minute margin on either side of the calls to make sure I can prepare and things like that. So I just send people a link and say, here's, here's my, here's my appointments here so you can see so just booked Time and that automatically drops in my calendar.

I found this saves me a lot of time going back and forth. So schedule once is a great tool for that. Now, the mobile phones are interesting because now you've got a second telephone that can interrupt you. But it's also got a lot of other things going on as well, such as text messages, Facebook notifications, and everything else. So once again, if you're setting that one hour aside, where you're going to be peak focus, turn your cell phone off, or set it to airport mode during that peak focus time and check it during your breaks. So you want to make sure you're not being interrupted.

While you're really doing that peak, peak focus. Dump notifications on email, Facebook, and all these other apps. Every app on your phone thinks it's the most important and yes, you have got to know whenever one of your friends post something on Facebook and it's continually interrupting you. So you need to get rid of that it just yeah check Facebook either during your personal time. Or during your social media time. But you don't need to have notifications the rest of the time.

So that brings us to social media and social media. Don't get me wrong social media is a great tool. It's a great marketing tool. I use it quite often. But I only have my social media tabs and apps such as Facebook or LinkedIn or Twitter open. When I'm actively working on my social media program.

I turn off all notifications so I don't get notified whenever there's anything new. Instead, I just checked them on a regular basis during a block of time that is set up for social media marketing. So this keeps me from being interrupted the rest of the time. Turn off all your other programs as well, anything that notifies you like Skype, Outlook, etc. I deal with a lot of clients around the world and we often share screens and they show me their computer screen, I can see that people have all these browser tabs all the way across and all these programs is open, and they're getting Skype messages while they're talking to me, it's really quite distracting for them. So turn off every program you're not using don't keep programs open when you're not using it.

I know our computers are so powerful now has lots of memory that they can handle all these programs. But each of those programs is a distraction. And even people who say Oh, it doesn't bother me to have the browser tabs open when they're trying to show me something, it's harder for them to find which browser tab, they actually want to show me because they've got 15 or 20 open. So close all programs you're not currently using for the task at hand and close all browser tabs that are not being used for the task at hand. Music when you're working that requires a lot of focus. You want music that doesn't have voice, you want light background music or ambient noise to help help your productivity, some music that works on Baroque classical music or meditative music.

I often listen to some Celtic meditative music that I quite like This works very well for providing focus. Music with lyrics are distracting if you find yourself tapping your toe to your favorite song or singing along you're not focusing on the actual work, but your power tunes your your rocking. Music is great for a physical task. So I'm cleaning the house you can bet I've got my tunes cranked it works very well for that with the lyrics and I'm singing along because these don't require a lot of mental focus their physical and it makes the time go much faster when I'm doing dishes or things like that. So like background music, we need to focus music with power power music with lyrics great for the physical tasks. Coworkers can interrupt you constantly.

So here's a few tips. If pot if you have an office, sit with your back to the door like arrange your office so you don't see people walk when they walk by and you're not automatically making eye contact with them which seems to be an invitation for them to hit interrupt you and come in. Wear a headset during your peak focus times when you don't want to be interrupted. People will think you're on a webinar or something and they probably won't interrupt you. If possible, do put up a Do Not Disturb sign during peak focus times. If someone interrupts you about something personal, say that you'll talk to them about it during lunch or coffee, say, I, you know, love to chat further about it.

But I've got there I've got a project I've got to get done. Let's Let's go for lunch or Let's meet at coffee. If someone else needs help say that you're tied up in a time sensitive task, and you can help them later. So if they come to you at 10 in the morning, say I've got to get this project finished by 11. I don't have much time. Let's meet three and I'll help you with it.

And this helps them start to value your time. So it shows them you value your time, you're going to help them that you value your time. But they can't just automatically interrupt you can continually so the idea is to reduce these interruptions as much as possible. Stop, stop interrupting each other at work, not to say you're anti social, you're chatting during coffee breaks, you're helping them when they need it. But you're setting times for those. If you're a manager and your staff are continually interrupting you, there's a number of things you can do.

And I've seen this happen. There was a very talented young woman who taken over her father's manufacturing company, and I watched a steady stream of people coming into your office interrupting her all day while I sat and watch what she did. And so one of the key things I did was I, I set it up so that everybody had to go to their own supervisor first, because she was only a director. There were four other supervisors reporting to her and everybody else should have been going through those supervisors. So they shouldn't be coming to her directly. They should be going to their supervisors.

So make sure they do that first. I suggested and this worked very well for her that she said a 20 minute meeting with each of her direct reports. And what she would do is she would create a list of all the things she wanted to talk to them about. So instead of every time she had a thought or question Instead of going up and interrupting somebody, I had her write it down on the list. And I had her direct reports do that too. Instead of coming interrupting her every time they had a question, they would write down everything and put it on the list other than emergencies.

You know, I would say for something emergency, like your largest clients about to walk out or the buildings on fire, yes, you want to interrupt somebody. But other than that, most things can be handled by putting them on the list. Then during that 20 minute meeting, they would both deal with their lists, and it was a very efficient way of dealing with it. Also, if you encourage your staff to ask questions via email, you can actually handle them as a batch. And they're not interrupting you because you're dealing with that during your email time, because your emails no longer interrupting you. Also, if you are using a task management system, it's great to handle update on tax tasks that way, I use a task management system called teamwork, but there's lots out there like Trello or outlook.

And I have my team put comments on the task. So I can see at a glance I assigned the task, the due date. Here's the comments from person as far as where they're at. And if I have a further question for them, I add that as a comment to the task as well, instead of sending them a separate email, so everything's all together. Now, in some cases, you may have a manager that continually interrupts you. So a couple of ideas for this.

One is to try to set up a daily meeting with them, where you cover everything they have assigned to you that way you're covering it during that one time again, that can be that 20 minute idea. So hopefully, they will interrupt you less suggest alternate ways you can report progress to them, such as your task management system, like outlook, teamwork, Trello, or a Santa or any other sort of weekly or daily reports. So if you mentioned Yes, I did put that in my report. But here's the answer. Then over time, if they're getting the information they need in the reports, hopefully, they won't need to interrupt you as much. Your physical work environment can be an interrupt interrupting you as well can also be a time It's been shown on average, if there's a piece of paper on your desk, the average person will pick it up three times before they deal with it.

So you're looking for a piece of paper on your desk, you're scrambling through, you pick up that and say, what's that? Oh, right, it's that thing, I got to do that later, and then you put it back down. So on average, you're handling stuff three times as much as you as you need to. So instead, and I did this very successfully, when I worked in in a large Chartered Bank, I had only one file on my desk at a time the file that I was working on, and my colleagues, I would have a stack on their desk two or three feet high of all of these, these folders and I would be quite concerned if my mortgage or my RSP or my investment was going into that stack, I'd be quite concerned about whether it would be done. I had just as many clients as everybody else but what I did was I had all of the folders in a credenza beside my desk, and then Hi, just had the one I was working on on top and in my day timer, which is what I was Using at the time, I would record when it was time to look at a person's file again.

So if I had sent a request for a mortgage, if I had requested that there was going to be a home appraisal, I knew that that would take two days. So therefore, I would schedule that two days from now. And then my day timer would say check, you know, check this file to see if the home appraisal has come back. So it nothing ever drops through the cracks. Everything got dealt with my desk was clean. One drawback I did find was my bosses thought I didn't have enough work and kept giving me more.

And I actually was had higher sales than anybody else in the branch, which is interesting, but my desk was always cleaned. And there was always like, there's always like busier. So there was a bit of a perception that I I was not working as hard even though I was doing much better than everybody else. So give some thought to your physical environment. I know for visual people, they often like to keep things you know, out where you can see them. But there's techniques to do that.

There are systems that can do that, such as online boards or tabs, you know, tabs, things you can tab through there's different ways that doing that so look for some of those solutions. If you need more help I do one on one coaching with people I do time management coaching. I do consulting with both individuals and groups and contact me for a free 20 minute consultation and I can help. For more information about this about what I do how I can help visit Captain time.com thank you so much for listening