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Key points
- Identify regular workplace interrupters, and reroute those interruptions into structured meetings.
- When you are tempted to interrupt others, compile your thoughts and questions before discussing them.
- Remember that interruptions can't all be dealt with and learn to prioritize accordingly.
Bud, a grain buyer working in a billion-dollar agricultural co-op, is always on the road helping farmers sell their grain. His work involves navigating transactions with numerous collaboration partners—contractors, schedulers, truckers, grain elevator operators, processors, financers, and sometimes more.
Bud wrote in an email, “I just took it for granted that most of my communication with most of these people was so informal and unstructured. So, I started carrying a notebook. I pull out my notebook and take notes at each stop, all day. My end-of-the-day routine now is to send out a bunch of emails based on my notes. It just squares up what I did during the day and keeps things from slipping through the cracks.”
Add structure to unstructured interactions at work, and you will get much better substance. That is especially true when it comes to interruptions—those unwelcome questions or comments that someone drops on you when you’re right in the middle of something else.
Dealing with regular interrupters
Who are your regular interrupters? And whom do you find yourself interrupting on a regular basis? Often, seemingly one-off communications can become an important, ongoing conversation. Again, the key is to add structure to those interruptions.
Try it. When one of your regular interrupters next interrupts you, don’t dismiss the conversation, but after absorbing the interruption, suggest scheduling a one-on-one meeting. In between now and your scheduled one-on-one, suggest that you each keep a list of what you want to discuss with the other—and that you each prepare a bit before you meet.
Imagine how much more productive that conversation is likely to be than all those interruptions. If it goes really well, maybe schedule another conversation. The goal is to get into a cadence of regular, structured communication, instead of dealing with all those unstructured interruptions.
This works especially well with high-maintenance customers and clients who think nothing of interrupting you because they are the ones paying the company all that money. They are often your top priority, so you know you’d better welcome and even embrace their interruptions. But you can serve them a whole lot better, and save yourself a lot of aggravation, by paying attention to the frequency of their interruptions and scheduling a regular one-on-one to get ahead of them. If you build the right cadence of structured one-on-ones, you will obviate most interruptions, except for real emergencies.
When you’re the interrupter
What if you’re the person who regularly interrupts others? Maybe you think nothing of peppering your own vendors or direct reports with questions or comments while they’re trying to work. Or maybe you find yourself interrupting your boss or that special go-to colleague almost daily because you need guidance or help.
Try, instead, asking those people for a one-on-one meeting. It can be lunch or coffee or a 15-minute conversation in the conference room. Save up your questions and prepare for the meeting in advance. Your direct reports, vendors, boss, or colleagues will thank you. Nobody’s at their best when they are being interrupted. Why would you want to be anybody’s regular interrupter?
Remember, you can’t do everything
Yes, you’re getting bombarded by people who think you can do everything. You simply must make choices among those competing priorities, agendas, and egos. Some things are not going to get done until later, and some things might not get done at all. That fact is inevitable.
Unless you accept the reality of competing priorities and make those tough choices better and sooner, at every step, you’ll fall into overcommitment syndrome. But really, so much overcommitment syndrome comes from wrong commitment syndrome— bad decisions about yes and no. That’s how you end up with a lot of forced no's. If you don’t make those choices sooner and better, someone else will, probably later and worse. Later, the best choices may no longer be available. You have to make choices, so make them good ones.
