Distraction is the No. 1 enemy of productivity. I talked about how to strengthen your battle plan against it during my recent interview on The Innovation Show.
Hosted by Aidan McCullen, The Innovation Show is a podcast for forward-thinking leaders, entrepreneurs and anyone else interested in change and disruption.
Of course, one of the biggest distractions any knowledge worker faces is a constant onslaught of email. In my conversation with Aidan, we talked about the perils of going through the day with one eye on email and one eye on your other work. You might feel productive if you do this, but you’re really increasing the time your work takes — and decreasing its quality.
You’ll learn many strategies for overcoming distractions during this podcast, as well as other insights on greater productivity. Some highlights:
- The reason that the “skim and skip” method of email management doesn’t work.
- How you have more control than you think over distractions.
- Why attention management is the key to doing your best work.
- The surprising way companies fail to maximize the money they spend providing paid vacation leave.
- How you’re damaging your productivity if you don’t treat email as “real” work.
- Why open office layouts don’t necessarily lead to innovation (and, in fact, often have the opposite effect.)
- How to determine if an employee can work from home.
- Why face time at the office is an outdated productivity metric.
- The need to consider how the world of work has dramatically changed in recent years and how that affects productivity.
- The importance of leaders modeling and advocating for productive habits.
- Why distraction isn’t just a work issue and how it affects whether we live a life of choice.
You can listen to my interview with Aidan at theinnovationshow.io. If you’re ready for a deeper dive after that, I recommend my article “How to Focus When Distractions Are Everywhere.”
