Wait a minute, did you say you can’t get anything done? Anyone who is successful in business today knows that one of the ways to stay successful in business is to get the work done. But what strategies are you utilizing in your practice to make sure it happens consistently?
It is a simple concept – someone hired you to do the work and you get that work done. Unfortunately, our daily lives are full of interruptions and having an afternoon to get work done without interruptions (let alone 30 minutes) is almost unheard of. The problem is distractions pile up and before you know it you can find yourself still at the office burning the midnight oil, just to keep pace.
In many ways, technology makes it completely impossible to avoid interruption. At any given moment, your cell phone, your office phone, your email, your text, your social media and a whole host of other things could interrupt you while you were in the middle of an important project.
Unfortunately, even minor distractions have catastrophic impacts on all of our productivity.
You need to learn to master your technology to create silence in the world around you. There specific, actionable strategies you can employ to help you succeed. You need to activate the technology you use to assist you in getting work done, rather than thwart you. When you take this proactive action, you will see an increase in your productivity and efficiency together with a reduction in mistakes.
Here are our top 5 best practice strategies for creating silence in your world so you can get things done:
1. Make a list of all your distractions.
What stops you from getting work done? While this is a loaded question, here we are talking specifically about your technology. Is it your phone ringing? Your smartphone notifications? Your news updates? Your obsessive need to check email? Spend at least a week observing your daily distractions and document them so you can know how to proactively limit then going forward.
2. Determine what you need.
Now that you know what is distracting you each day, you can make a list of the technology that creates this distraction. Once you’ve made this list we will move to training your device.
3. Train your device.
In many ways, the specific device you use will dictate how you create silence. Like it or not our strategies can be dependent on the tech you own right now. Specifically, we are looking at setting up do-not-disturb features. This may be silent mode, do-not-disturb, messenger assistant, or any one of countless others. While both the iPhone and the Android platform have preset to do-not-disturb feature built in, there are additional apps you can add to help you manage your technology. As stated in Step Two, the first step is knowing where you need to create your silence. The second step is determining what functionalities exist on each of the devices you use and, finally, setting them up to create the environment you want.
4. Allow for emergencies.
The people you care about in your life (and the court and the bar) still need to be able to reach you in an emergency. Within your device control features create a circle or group of individuals and contract information that can still reach you when you have the do-not-disturb settings on.
5. Fine tune and enhance your strategy.
It would be counterproductive to tell you that this is a one-time solution. Every time there is a new update to your software, you add a device to your ecosystem or you change the way you do things, this process will need to adapt and change. Schedule monthly check-ins on your calendar now to make sure your technology continues to stay managed and doing what you need it to.
Remember, at the end of the day, you hold the keys to your own success. If you need a little help starting your journey to greatness and creating your strategies for implementation, let us know – we’d love to talk about it. Contact us on our website or at yourteam@practice42.com or by phone at 850-933-5072, and we will set up a complimentary 30 minute brainstorming session.
