108Managing Yourself
the University of California–Irvine, getting back on track after being inter-
rupted can take more than twenty minutes.
Plan ahead for these obstacles and temptations. When you need to
focus, close your door or put up a “do not disturb” sign. Turn off notifi ca-
tions on your phone and computer, at least for email and chat applications.
Consider disabling your Wi-Fi entirely, or use a service to block certain
websites for a given amount of time. Experiment with different tactics, and
don’t be afraid to tell your colleagues about your efforts: “I’m going to be
working on the budget presentation early this afternoon, so I’ll be off email
TIPS
How to protect your time from other people
Your direct reports come to you for help or a decision; your peers want
your support for their own goals; and from time to time, your boss wants
a favor, too. Being smart about how you respond to these requests will
let you make the most of your time and still support your colleagues
appropriately.
• Know when to say no. When someone asks for a favor or off ers
an opportunity, ask yourself: Is this work valuable to my organiza-
tion? Is it important to my professional goals? Is it important to me
personally? Am I the only person who could do this task? If I say
no, will I damage the relationship? If none of these questions elicit
a strong yes, then that’s a good sign you shouldn’t do it.
•
Learn how to say no. If you’ve decided that it isn’t something you
can do, politely decline, delegate, or suggest a replacement. Some
scripts for these awkward conversations:
− “Thanks for thinking of me. Unfortunately my plate is full at the
moment, and I have to say no. I’ll look forward to seeing how
your project turns out.”
Personal Productivity109
until after three.” If you are interrupted, know how to refuse a request or
end a conversation if you need to get back to work (see the box “Tips: How
to protect your time from other people”).
Organize your space
If your environment is disordered, you’ll spend precious minutes looking
for materials you need to get work done. You’ll also be more vulnerable to
distraction, as other objects or obligations catch your eye. Here’s what you
can do to make your offi ce conducive to focus:
− “I can’t take this on right now, but I’d like to off er the opportu-
nity to Omar. He’s been looking for a chance to take on more
leadership in our team, and I think he’d handle this really well.”
− For your boss: “I’m not certain I can take this on successfully
with my current set of priorities. I could use your guidance on
what’s most important to you.”
• Exit conversations. Sometimes all people want from you is your
attention and even that’s too much. But escaping from an enthusi-
astic conversationalist can be uncomfortable, so try these scripts:
− “Do you want to continue this conversation over lunch tomor-
row? Right now I have to get back to work.”
− “Can you send me an email about your question, so I can follow
up later? Right now I need to fi nish this task.”
− “Sorry, someone’s waiting for this work so I need to get it done
now. Can I swing by your desk in an hour?”
− “I hate to cut you off , but . . .” “Sorry to be rude, but . . .”
110Managing Yourself
Eliminate the clutter.
If your workspace is really a mess, set aside a block of time to clean it up.
What papers can you fi le? Pass on to someone else? Throw away? Once
you’ve completed the initial purge, get in the habit of tidying up your desk
when you’re transitioning between tasks.
Keep what you need within reach.
Put objects you use every day on your desk—a particular notebook, a pad
of sticky notes, your headphones. Store everything else in a drawer, out of
sight. This might feel odd at fi rst, but it helps signifi cantly with focus.
Make yourself comfortable.
Do you get a crick in your neck when you look at your computer monitor
for too long? Does your desk chair give you a backache? Adjust the height
and positioning of these objects, and make sure the rest of your space is
aesthetically pleasing to you, too. Harsh light or busy sightlines can be as
distracting as a loud noise when your brain is restless.
Organize your email
An update from your employee. A question from a client. An invitation
from your boss. You’ll have to respond to these messages at some point, but
when you expose yourself to a stream of notifi cations, you undermine your
ability to meet the priorities you’ve already established for yourself. Email
can become an excuse to procrastinate when you fall out of fl ow on a proj-
ect, and it doesn’t serve you well to allow email to hinder you from complet-
ing important work. Here’s what you can do to keep the mayhem in check:
Clean up your inbox.
The guilt or stress you feel over unanswered messages can be as intrusive as
a new notifi cation, so just as you set time aside to clean your physical space,
also make time to clean your virtual space. Sort your emails by sender and
delete the backlog of messages you don’t need, as well as the ones you’ve al-
ready responded to. Then create three folders in which to fi le all the emails
Personal Productivity111
that are still in your inbox: follow-up, hold, and archive. Messages that re-
quire a thoughtful response go into the follow-up folder, while notes about
future events, like an invitation, go into hold. Archive everything that re-
quires no further action, but that you still want to keep a record of. Going
forward, use this system to sort new emails as they arrive.
Start over.
If you don’t have time to go through all your old messages, don’t. Put them
all in a separate archive folder and start fresh with a new inbox. This strat-
egy might seem ruthless—you totally were going to get to all those mes-
sages someday!—but if you honestly can’t sort through fourteen thousand
unread messages, declaring “email bankruptcy” allows you to move on and
focus on your future productivity. But save this move for emergencies only;
don’t develop a reputation as someone who is nonresponsive by leveraging
this option too often.
Turn off notifi cations.
If you really need to concentrate, turn off notifi cations or close your email
client altogether. Set up an auto-reply for the time you’re offl ine: “I’m step-
ping away from email until fi ve to get some work done, but you can reach
me by phone or text if something urgent comes up.”
Stress management
Stress and lack of focus are actually two parts of a vicious cycle. You can’t
focus, so you don’t get work done. When you don’t get work done, you be-
come too stressed to focus. And repeat.
“Stress is a physiological response to any change, whether good or bad,
that alerts the adaptive fi ght-or-fl ight response of the brain and body,” says
Dr. Herbert Benson, founder of the Mind/Body Medical Institute and an
associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Maybe a col-
league caught you off guard with a diffi cult question during a presenta-
tion, or perhaps your boss just added another urgent assignment to your
already full plate. Sometimes internal issues trigger stress, like when you
112Managing Yourself
worry about failing at a new and diffi cult assignment. The likelihood of
managers experiencing stress in the workplace is very high in today’s fast-
paced and complex organizations.
There is some good stress, of course. Stress is a natural, even useful
reaction that can motivate you and help you focus under pressure. Business
culture often seizes on this; how often have you been asked, as motivation
in the face of a big challenge, if you are tough enough, smart enough, com-
mitted enough to succeed.
The best managers know how to balance the benefi t of stress, while
protecting from the negative impact of stress. According to psychiatrist
and attention defi cit disorder expert Edward Hallowell, too much stress
actively sabotages your ability to perform: “When you are confronted with
the sixth decision after the fi fth interruption in the midst of a search for
the ninth missing piece of information on the day that the third deal has
collapsed and the twelfth impossible request has blipped unbidden across
your computer screen, your brain begins to panic, reacting just as if that
sixth decision were a blood-thirsty, man-eating tiger.” The result: bad
stress. The signs can include uncontrollable anxiety, disorganization, and
even anger, disengagement, physical exhaustion, and illness, all of which
lead to poor performance, not to mention a lower quality of life.
These reactions are a matter of neurochemistry, not moral fi tness. The
frontal lobes of your brain, where nuanced cognition like decision making,
planning, and learning happen, start sending distress signals to the deep re-
gions of the brain that govern your survival instincts. And those regions re-
spond with a range of powerful, primitive signals: fear, alarm, withdrawal.
All this means that your ability to evaluate information and solve
problems crashes just as the rest of your mind and body lock into crisis
mode. “In survival mode,” says Hallowell, “the manager makes impulsive
judgments, angrily rushing to bring closure to whatever matter is at hand.”
To better manage your reactions, establish routines that will regulate
your general stress levels and adopt practices to relieve high tensions in the
moment. The more effectively you monitor yourself, the more you’ll be able
to help your team members manage their stress, too.
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