How to Protect Your Focus Time When Everyone Wants You Now cover art

How to Protect Your Focus Time When Everyone Wants You Now

How to Protect Your Focus Time When Everyone Wants You Now

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 I want to begin today’s episode by thanking you for listening to this podcast. Earlier this week, this podcast surpassed one million downloads. For context, that puts this podcast in the top 3 to 5 percent of the productivity and time management niche. So, thank you. I do this for you, and for all of you who have sent in questions for answering. You keep me on my toes and challenge me every week. For that, I am eternally grateful. Thank you. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Time-Based Productivity Course Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived The Time Sector System 5th Year Anniversary The Working With… Weekly Newsletter Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes Subscribe to my Substack The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Script | 386 Hello, and welcome to episode 386 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show. This week’s question is about a subject I’ve always been a little afraid of covering. I’m afraid because there is no simple answer, yet it’s certainly one that has a solution. Unfortunately, that solution isn’t an easy one to implement. How do you manage your time and productivity in a dynamic, fast changing work environment? The problem is that standard advice often doesn’t work. For instance, if you are in IT support and systems and company wide software are continually breaking down, how do you find the time to do focused work, when you are being interrupted by emergencies from the moment you arrive at work to the time you leave? It does have a solution, but it involves the word “no” and the use of experience and knowledge to determine how “urgent” something really is. I’m currently reading Dominic Sandbrook’s book, Seasons in the Sun. It’s about Britain between 1974 and 1979. Five years when the British government was in perpetual turmoil. Not just dealing with one or two crises. There were hundreds and they were happening every day. From economic breakdown to Northern Ireland being on the verge of civil war. Every day brought a new emergency that needed instant solutions. Reading it today makes the political turmoils we face now look like a walk on the beach by comparison. Yet the government managed, just. It wasn’t easy, but they muddled through, and economic collapse and Northern Ireland civil war did not happen. It was close, but these catastrophes were fortunately averted. Reading about it now, it seems the UK between 1975 and 1980 was collapsing, yet as Dominic Sandbrook points out, it didn’t and most people were able to get on with their lives and improve their living standards. If you’re working in an environment where you feel you are only one crisis away from a total shutdown, don’t despair. It can be handled, and it’s possible to implement some processes and techniques to maintain some sanity when you may feel things are about to fall apart. So, with that said, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Jan. Jan asks, Hi Carl, I work in a company with no boundaries. Anyone can send a Teams message to me anytime, and I am expected to deal with it immediately. This means I never have time to do my important work. What advice would you give to someone in my position? Thank you, Jan for your question. One of the most dangerous things one can do is to believe there is no way through when the work piles up and there seems to be no respite. The first place I would begin in your situation, Jan, is to look at the type of requests you are getting. Not all of them will be urgent must be done immediately. It’s also likely when you look at them, you will find that very few are of that nature. Back in the day, when I worked in hotel management, it could be said that no one day was ever the same. And there were a lot of unknowns happening practically every minute. Yet, our training was build on understanding what was urgent and what was not. A business party turning up at 8:30 am asking where their pre-booked meeting room was, when no such room had been prepared was a drop everything and get the room set up urgently. Similarly, a guest asking for a hairdryer, was also a drop everything urgency—it was likely they discovered their hairdryer was not working after they had just washed their hair. Yet most other requests were handled in the normal fashion. A change of towels, a noisy air conditioner that won’t turn off or missing bottles of water from a room’s mini-bar. All of these “urgencies” would have been unknown when the day began, but given that they happened ...
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