For some reason I think people get a little blind once they’re in the thick of things at work because I know I’ll be having one of the busiest days of the entire week or month, and I’m on a telecom and have a pretty big headset on my head, but that doesn’t seem to stop people from coming right up into my cube area.
You make me want to lose my… oh, never mind.
It’s as if I’m not obviously busy enough and then they just start talking to me like nothing is going on. It’s pretty obvious that I’m already doing something. It can be pretty frustrating for someone to just interrupt or attempt to interrupt what you’re doing because they believe what they have is priority. So, if you want to get more done and grow your job for the future, we need to take care of some of these crazy people out there.
1) Their Mistakes, Your Fixes
I don’t know about you, but sometimes it seems like I spend a good chunk of my day fixing the things that other people have done that what either poorly planned or not well-coordinated. Now I’d like to assume most of it is just innocence or maybe ignorance, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but at the end of the day this means you get less of what you need to get done because you’re spending your time doing what other people didn’t do properly. Plan to help people one time learn how to do it better, so that you can end up helping them, yourself and the company do it better all the time.
2) Gossip Occupying Your Time
This is something that I put to rest very quickly. There’s okay times and then there’s not okay times to talk on the job. I understand the need for a break and to have a nice relationship with your coworkers, but when it comes to just idle gossip about stuff that doesn’t matter and is potentially harmful, there is absolutely zero time for any of that, no matter where you’re at. Stop it quickly and get in the habit of being known as someone who stops it. It’ll go away and you can take your day back.
3) Interrupting Your Workflow
Some genius efficiency or communication expert at some of the jobs I’ve worked at thought it was a great idea to have a phone, email, instant messaging and a cube wall, a cube door. Well guess what? That means at any given time you can have some random piece of information interrupting your workflow. From studies that I’ve seen, it takes approximately six minutes of reboot time for you mentally to get back into the groove of things after an interruption.
So what happens if you’re bugged every six minutes or every ten minutes, every fifteen minutes, whatever it if? Your day, each time that happens, just got six minutes less efficient for each time. And they wonder why we only get three hours of work done in an eight hour workday. Stop all the chitter chatter, chitter chatter.
Don’t Be Ruined, My Friend
If you’re ready to take back your life and stop some of the craziness of the people around you at work, figure out how to fix the mistakes of others in a professional and good way, stop all of the gossip at work and see how you can work to interrupt the workflow. And you’ll be quickly on your way to more efficient time in your job.