Can you read this blog entry without being interrupted?

The copious amounts of email in your inbox have had a lot of press lately including the New York Times and a segment on NPR. The gist of it: there is too much and its distracting you from getting your work done.

Another NYT article focuses on a frightening statistic: 28% of the time the American worker is distracted by non-urgent matters or recovering from a distraction.

Just between writing those two sentences, took three minutes.

• I went to my Web browser to find the link the NY Times article.
• When I went to my browser, there was a production page I was looking at earlier I needed to send some notes on.
• So I sent a quick email.
• Then saw something in my inbox I had been waiting for, so I responded to that.
• I finally went back to the browser to find the article. Luckily, I remembered what I was looking for (this time at least).

Sound familiar?

Before I was at Microsoft, I read a previous article about distraction (Meet the Life Hackers) leading to an experiment with the team I was managing. For a week, I ask them to

• Thin their IM list to just our team or turn it off
• Turn off their Email notifications (those pop-ups in the right hand corner or a sound in Outlook)

I told them if I really needed them I would walk the 25 feet to their desk. Yes, our email piled up a bit, but we were no longer addicted to it. Also, many questions asked were answered by someone else. For Outlook you can see how to turn on and off email notifications or watch a demo.

Because sometimes you just need six minutes to get something done.

Like write a blog entry.  --Doug