ist magazine February 2023

IF you work remotely, either part-time or full-time, temporarily or permanently, you have probably discovered that you are a lot more productive when you are not in the office. The main reason for the increase in productivity is that people aren’t inviting you to “got-a-minute” meet ings. “Got-a-minute” meetings are those unannounced drop-ins that always take more than a minute and result in people stealing your time – unintentionally or not. The “got-a-minute” meeting can be frustrating and time consuming. You may wonder why so many people want to steal your time. This happens for a variety of reasons, including: • It makes their job easier. Some people are stealing your time because they know you will say yes to their requests. They know they can get out of doing their work because you’ll do it for them. This is sometimes called “reverse delegation” and can happen when you delegate a task to a team member or co-worker. When they ask you a question about it, you take the task back from them instead of helping them find the answer. • They’ve been conditioned. Have you unintentionally trained your team to check in with you before taking action? If you catch yourself saying things like, “Run that by me …” or “Let me know ...”, you could be micro-managing (gasp!) your team without realizing it. • You feel responsible. Leaders some times fall into the trap of thinking that they aren’t doing their job if they aren’t always available. Banish that thought. You could actually be depriving someone of the opportu nity to develop their skills if you are too available. Give people the chance to figure things out on their own.

So, how do you protect your time and establish boundaries without being bossy or getting a reputation of being unap proachable or missing-in-action? It starts with being pre-active . This means antici pating what will happen and taking actions to prevent that thing from happening. For example, it’s not hard to anticipate that you will be interrupted when you sit down at your desk and try to work, especially if any of the scenarios above sound familiar. Follow these three steps to stop people from stealing your time: 1 : DESIGNATE TIME. When you have to focus on a specific task that takes all your brain power, don’t try to multi-task. Studies reveal that multi-tasking does not make people more productive. According to a University of Utah study, only 2% of people can actually multitask and the other 98% of us are over estimating our abilities. This means that we might not be producing the highest quality work or as much work as we think. The antidote to multi-tasking is to focus on one task at a time. Do this by designating time on your calendar to focus on those tasks that require a high level of concentration. 2 : COMMUNICATE YOUR PLANS. While many people agree with the idea of time-blocking in theory, they fear that other people won’t respect their time. Whether it’s your team, your co-workers or your boss, people will typically respect your wishes if you tell them in advance what you are trying to do. Some people react to this idea by saying, “I can’t do that. Someone might need something from me.” If you said to your boss, “Hey boss, I’m going to block off an hour on Friday to get these reports done. Do you need anything from me before then?” Do you think the boss will say, “That’s a terrible

When you learn to be assertive when it comes to protecting your time, you will quickly realize the tangible benefits of higher quality work and increased productivity.

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