How to avoid workplace interruptions

DO YOU remember your last truly productive working day? Or is your daily work routine one of hectically jumping back-and-forth between unanswered e-mails to never-ending chat messages and staff meetings?

Particularly those in office jobs face the challenge that their working days are increasingly dissected. And, after each interruption, the brain needs time to reorganise and again concentrate on the actual task at hand.

Vera Starker, a business psychologist, consultant and co-founder of the think tank Next Work Innovation (NWI) has long been occupied by the question of how to put a stop to this increasing fragmentation of the working day. “In the age of knowledge, the brain is our machine, and we can’t be stopping the production line 20 times a day,” she says.

Productive only three days out of five?

Companies and employers bear most of the responsibility for shaping working conditions to the requirements of the knowledge age, the expert says. But this doesn’t mean that employees have to remain idle. Your ability to concentrate is an area you can also work on yourself, Starker says.

“Try to reflect on your own behaviour at work. Anyone who can say on three days out of five, ‘Today I have really accomplished something’ has focused well and achieved a lot.”

The question remains, how to get there. Starker advises as a first step to be selective. When it seems that “our desk is always full, there’s a load lying there that can’t get done” then radically sort out those tasks which you have to tackle first. “In this, you must also be able to say ‘no’,” she says.

Focus time, part one: 50 minutes twice before lunch

In the second step, the worker must learn again how to concentrate. “We are all geared for a sprint,” the business psychologist says. “Concentration is a marathon.”

For so-called focus times – meaning slots during which you can concentrate on a task without disruptions – there need to be the right framework conditions: That means shutting down the mail programme and putting the smartphone away. “If I change the external factors, then I need less willpower to get my attention back again on my actual task,” Starker argues.

How long should each slot last? “We have had crazily good results with two hours per day,” the expert says, suggesting roughly two 50-minute slots each followed by a 10-minute break.

Starker advises scheduling the focus time slots before noon. The advantage of this is that you have already accomplished a comparatively great deal early on. “Meetings in the afternoon then gain a wholly different efficiency because you no longer have other things yet to be taken care of on your mind.”

Overall, the expert says what it comes down to is diversity in the working day. No one has to toil quietly and concentrated for eight hours a day. Concentration phases should alternate with periods for cooperation, creativity, and of course breaks.

Focus time, part two: Holding a meeting with yourself

In companies where focus times play no role whatsoever, employees can actively lobby for them. “This topic can very well be taken up with the team as the smallest organic unit,” Starker says. For, above all, it’s routine which contributes to success. “As such, you don’t always have to negotiate with yourself when you want to take some time for concentrated work.”

According to the business psychologist, employees often don’t think quiet concentrated work is possible because they have meetings to attend. “But this is precisely the crux of the matter: The focus period should be taken seriously, like a meeting with yourself.”

Self-efficacy is the reward

In Starker’s view, just how quickly you get used (again) to concentrated work over longer periods is a question of type. “For example, people who have already studied mindfulness quickly notice changes,” she says. Those with a high stress level, on the other hand, may also find focus time stressful at first. “It’s harder for them because their bodies are used to elevated levels of cortisol due to sustained high stress levels,” says the expert.

In the end, however, they are rewarded with self-efficacy. For office workers, Starker says, satisfaction is related to going home feeling like they’ve had a productive day at work. “And there is a big difference between being busy and being productive.”