15% of UK workers spend two hours per workday distracted, equating to 74 working days a year. From talking to employees to looking at social media, there’s loads of different distractions throughout the day to tempt workers away from productivity.
Companies are continuously communicating between employees (in office and remote), customers, and partners. These emails, app alerts, phone calls, etc. demand instant attention, which draws workers away from the tasks at hand and adds a level of stress and urgency.
How can workers keep up with this culture of instant access, while giving themselves the chance to focus on other tasks?
Understand What’s Distracting You
The first step is understanding what distractions you’re sensitive to. The sound of people typing could drive you crazy, or maybe you can’t concentrate when you’re hungry — there are different kinds of distractions, and they all affect people differently! For a day, pay attention to moments of distraction, and keep a record of what distracted you in the first place.
It's easy to consider a colleague asking you questions as a distraction, but it’s important to distinguish the difference between necessary communication and actual disruption. If you’re in a customer service role, it’s typical that you’ll have to answer the phone. In that case, phone calls are part of your job, and not a disruption to your workday.
Create a Distraction-Free Environment
Once you’re aware of your distractions, you can start to put things in place to help you out. The first step is tackling your environment…
Ways to reduce distractions
- If you can, sit in a different area when you need to focus. Booking out a meeting room or finding a quiet space reduces most physical distractions, like employees talking, typing, phone calls and more.
- Wear noise cancelling headphones to block out distracting noises.
- Hide away your personal phone so you’re not tempted to go on social media.
- If you can’t focus when you’re hungry, make sure you have some snacks readily available. This way, you can graze while working and keep hunger at bay.
Set Clear Communication Boundaries
For this to work, you need to set clear boundaries and expectations with colleagues. Let them know that you’re trying to reduce distractions, and that includes communication with them. There’s a few things to note here:
- Give them access to your calendar. This way, they can see what you’ve got scheduled, how long you’re focusing for, and when the best time is for a chat.
- Let them know that it’s okay to distract you if they really need you, i.e. if there’s something important or urgent going on. You don’t want to scare them away from approaching you — especially if you’re their line manager.
- Avoid sending messages and emails during focus time unless it’s urgent. You want to set an example, and you’re sending signals that you’re available if you’re messaging them.
Some companies have implemented traffic light systems using signs, lanyards, stickers or more. Essentially, you display red if you don’t want to be disturbed, yellow if you can talk for short periods, or green if you’re happy to be approached. It seems a bit dramatic, but it works for some bigger companies!
Use Technology to Reduce Distraction
- Turn on Do Not Disturb mode on your phone, laptop, and other devices. Non-urgent notifications will be silenced, leaving only necessary alerts to come through.
- Make use of the statuses on Teams — available, busy, away, etc. — and the custom status messages. You can do this in your calendar when you’re scheduling tasks, or manually in Teams. You can then customise your notifications depending on your activity status.
- Microsoft Viva can schedule focus time for you each day, working around other meetings and events to help you reduce distractions. This is a good option if you’re not using your Outlook calendar to schedule tasks throughout the day.
- Set up inbox rules and email filtering to minimise notifications and get ahead of email organisation.
- Scheduled notifications can be set up on some devices, which bulk deliver all your notifications in one go, at a time of your choice. So when you schedule relaxed time, you can see all of your notifications.
Build Habits that Support Focus
You can also use time-blocking techniques like the Pomodoro method to better manage your time and schedule tasks. By giving each task a block in your diary, it’s less overwhelming, more structured, and easy to track what you’ve done each day. Some people like digital calendars and organisation tools, some prefer paper — it’s up to you.
Remember, no one can focus for 8 hours straight — you need to schedule breaks and down-time. This is why the Pomodoro technique is great, you work for 25 minutes and then have a break for 5 minutes — it helps to promote focus and prevent burnout. Of course, you need to schedule a lunch break too, alongside these smaller breaks.
You should also schedule time to reply to email and notifications. You can’t just ignore colleagues all day, so schedule 2-3 blocks throughout the day to reply to people, or let them know you’re free to discuss things during those periods.
Every so often, check-in and review how your processes are working for you. Have you been more focused? Or did these changes overwhelm you?
Distractions can lose businesses up to 74 days a year in lost time. We’ve covered some ways you can change your environment and some digital tools you can put in place to mitigate these distractions.
Remember, take one step at a time! Smaller changes are better than nothing.
