The blog

For you who pre­fer lis­ten­ing to read­ing, this post is also avail­able as an episode of the ​“Done!” pod­cast:

Inter­rup­tions take time

There are of course some upsides to being flex­i­ble, agile, and spon­ta­neous too, but the risk is that these side-tasks you keep tak­ing care of become real inter­rup­tions which will make your orig­i­nal task take much longer than you orig­i­nal­ly planned for. Since it was prob­a­bly an impor­tant task, you might end up feel­ing stressed, pres­sured to fin­ish and have bare­ly enough time to make your deadline.

One of the rea­sons these peo­ple pause one task to ​”just do this oth­er task in-between” is because they fear that if they do not, they might for­get to do the most recent­ly added task before it is due. They, there­fore, think they might as well get it out of their way right now and be done with it so that they can get back to the orig­i­nal task — until some­thing else rolls along that needs their attention.

Easy to catch, but also easy to keep

This makes me think of a ​”drip tray”. A drip tray is used to gath­er excess liq­uid that has splashed, dropped, or end­ed up out­side of where it was sup­posed to go. The beau­ty of this tray is that what­ev­er end­ed up out­side of its con­tain­er is still col­lect­ed. It is not lost and will not go to waste but is tak­en care of and preserved.

Per­haps a metaphor­ic drip tray could be of some use when ran­dom, dis­rupt­ing thoughts and tasks sud­den­ly appear and block our view of what we were in the mid­dle of doing and would pre­fer to fin­ish? It could be a place where you catch those fleet­ing thoughts or things you must not for­get. You can write it there and can turn your atten­tion back to what you were doing know­ing that they will still be there once you have fin­ished the task you were so focused on and in the mid­dle of completing.

Do this

If this rings a bell and you too tend to throw small extra tasks into your work­flow just because you fear for­get­ting to do them, then do this:

1. Decide what will con­sti­tute your drip tray in these sit­u­a­tions. Here are some aspects to keep in mind when decid­ing what it will be:
   • It needs to be in a sin­gle loca­tion because if you write a note here and scrib­ble a few words there, you will still end up with a messy to-do-list and not feel sure you have not for­got­ten something.
   • It needs to be eas­i­ly avail­able. You need to be able to ​”open it” with as few clicks, moves, swipes, and but­tons to push as possible.
   • It is def­i­nite­ly a good thing if you can access it just as eas­i­ly when you are by your desk as when you are in a meet­ing or on the move. It could be a note-tak­ing app of some sort that syncs auto­mat­i­cal­ly between your phone, com­put­er, and tablet. It can be a par­tic­u­lar page in OneNote which you always use as a drip tray — regard­less of where you are and what you are doing. It can be a small note­book you always car­ry with you or your email inbox to which you email your­self mes­sages con­tain­ing all the things you come to think of. (Per­son­al­ly, I have a spe­cial fold­er on my com­put­er desk­top into which any­thing incom­ing, remem­bered, and not yet processed or dealt with ends up. There, and nowhere else, is where short notes made in the text edi­tor and hand­writ­ten notes scanned with my phone and saved as PDFs, end up.)
2. Use the drip tray dur­ing the day as soon as you come to think of some­thing when you are in the mid­dle of doing some­thing else which you want to focus on and finish.
   
3. Before the day is over, emp­ty the drip tray. Take care of every­thing it has gath­ered. Make to-do-tasks from every­thing you do not do instant­ly. Save infor­ma­tion and mate­r­i­al you do not need to do any­thing with but which you will need at a lat­er date.

Less scat­tered, more focused

If you get your­self a ​”drip tray” of some sort that gath­ers every­thing that threat­ens to ​”over­flow” dur­ing the day (and there­by dis­rupt your plan and sched­ule), no sud­den flash­es of inspi­ra­tion or remem­bered tasks will be lost since you catch them quick­ly and save them in a secure loca­tion while you keep work­ing with con­cen­tra­tion on the task which actu­al­ly has the high­est pri­or­i­ty at the moment. Instead of jump­ing between tasks and get­ting more and more scat­tered by the minute, you will, to a greater extent, get to focus on and fin­ish one task at a time, and with that, har­vest the sweet fruits of your focused labor.

What’s your way?

How do you ensure that you get to do one thing at a time? Do you have a great trick that always works for you and which might, there­fore, work for oth­ers as well? Email me and share your ideas. 

(By the way, do you know how two egg timers can make you focus on the right thing?)