I’ve been a big believer that multitasking is a myth since before I read Dave Crenshaw’s book back in 2008 (The Myth of Multitasking: How “Doing It All” Gets Nothing Done)
When trying to do everything at once, it is like spinning around on a carnival ride; going fast, feeling sick, and getting nowhere.
I had also seen Dr Glenn Wilson the University of London researcher who is quoted as showing “those distracted by incoming email and phone calls saw a 10-point fall in their IQ.”
Now Jill Konrath introduced me to additional research showing…
“distractions consume an average of 2.1 hours per day.” (Agile Selling pg 183)
I know we can’t get rid of all our distractions.
What if we eliminated HALF of that time… AND spent it with the people on our team to work on making them the best salespeople they can be?
that adds more than a month of EXTRA COACHING annually
52 weeks x 5 days x 2.1 hours = 546 wasted hours (divided by 2) = 274 hours to pick up/8 hours in a work day = 34.25 days
Here are three tips:
1. Create “office hours” for yourself once in the morning & again near the end of the day – to allow your team members to save up their questions that aren’t critical knowing you’ll be around to answer them.
2. Instead of stopping what you’re doing when someone asks if you’ve “got a few minutes?” reschedule that conversation they want to have for when you finish what you’re doing – if it is 10 minutes or 90 minutes from now (hey you could even ask “can this wait until office hours?” if you have them set up).
3. Totally disconnect, spend 60 minutes completely focused on a single task THEN move on to the next thing that popped up in your inbox.. even better take a moment to prioritize the new task into your existing to do list.
Want more … of course you do … well:
* buy Jill Konrath’s book, Agile Selling
* stay tuned & read the next post
image courtesy of © Jennywoo | Dreamstime
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