Irresponsibility can be an addiction as strong as drugs or alcohol,

At the end of the day, ¿don’t you feel time flew by with nothing to show for it?

It’s a common sentiment that I got very familiar with at the beginning of my career, besides being something i hear frequently from clients.

In a study done by BASEX and The New York Times, it was determined that 28% of your workday is wasted on unnecessary interruptions and the time it takes to get back on track, that is two hours every day spent in getting alarms (the ringtone, the twitter update, new mail ding, etc.).

The problem stems from the myth of “multi-tasking”, neuroscience research has shown that the brain is not in capacity to retain simultaneous focus, the only thing it can do to keep up is to quickly change from one process to another, creating the illusion of parallel thinking, this is called “switch-tasking”. This is very hard for your brain to do, and the constant effort can make you lose up to 10 points of your I.Q., that is more than double the adverse effects of marihuana.

Besides, 20% of your time is wasted in meetings, of which a study by HP demonstrated, 80% are completely ineffective and inconsequent.

So to the question of who stole my time, the answer is: interruptions and meetings, between those two you lose on average 5 hours each day, leaving only 3 to work.

Fortunately, there are simple solutions that are easy to implement, and that will allow you to reduce that “dead time”, being more effective with less stress.

The Following steps were developed by Merlin Mann from 43-folders.com on his presentation: “Who stole my brain”. I consider them a work of genius and highly recommend you watch them, they are:

1. Identify Leaks: Keep your attention this week on your primary detractors of focus: The people, events, sounds or situations that make you lose track of what you were doing with the highest frequency. If I stepped up to you and asked for 100$, the first question would always be “what for?”, but if I asked for 20 minutes you would give them to me without question. Ask why and try to exercise your “no” muscle.
2. Govern Access: Ask yourself: “Who has access to my attention right now?” The answer says a lot about you and the focus you have in your work.  In the middle of our communication revolution, it’s easy for thousands of people to have access to you at all times, its impossible to focus that way. Almost anything anyone has to tell you can wait 20 minutes for you to finish what you are doing.
3. Minimize notifications: The Ping of your cell phone and the Ding in your inbox are the two most disruptive elements of your life and you haven’t even noticed.

Normally, email clients will check for new messages every 10 to 15 minutes, and issue an alarm that makes you immediately check if there is something “urgent”. At the end of the day you will have interrupted your flow 48 times, most of those for e-mail chains and kitty pictures. The same thing happens with your cell phone. If you just adjust your software to check every 30 minutes I can promise a more effective work session, if there really is something urgent, somebody will call you.

1. Work in sprints: I know that you can’t spend the whole day isolated; the idea is to negotiate your time. A good way to achieve a middle point is working in “sprints” of 20 minutes. This is very easy to implement, just set a timer for 20 minutes, put your cell phone in silent mode (not vibrate) and notify your workmates that you are unavailable (if your company allows it, you can use headphones, even if you aren’t listening to anything is a good way to get the message across), when the alarm sounds you can check your phone, return your calls, check the kitten pictures in your mail and after that, go back to work. Try it for just one day, you won’t lose anything by trying and this very simple thing can change your life.
2. Renegotiate: When the owner of the company stops by your cubicle and asks for a sales report, you can’t normally say no, but you can renegotiate difficult situations. For example: “With pleasure boss, I was just finishing up the specs that the engineering team needs to start production, is it okay for me leave that on stand-by?”  Sometimes by doing what we are asked we don’t deliver what is really needed, instead of stressing out and trying to deliver both things, just state openly what you are working on and you may be surprised by what your boss has to say.

These different patterns make up a pretty effective work method that guarantees a productive day, remember that time is impossible to manage, we all have 24 hours and it doesn’t matter what you do, they will fly by at the same speed. But we can administrate our actions and the way in which we execute them.

I know that “doing it all” sound seductive, but you must remember that life is like a supermarket, you go by with your cart and everything looks good, but when you get to the cashier you will get a bill “Sir, that will be 150 years, 2 months and 15 days”, if you don’t have enough to pay, then you have to start returning things.

Next week we will work with your commitments lists to determine your current heading, for now, focus on having “success days”, don’t forget to keep capturing and filling your list, and don’t give away your time for nothing.

As always I am ready to help in any way I can through my twitter (@alexmrv) and through the comments section of this site.