Let’s face it….

Here is how a lot of us spend our day at the workplace:

1. We get to work and check our emails first thing in the morning.

Checking our emails first thing in the morning is an excellent ways of letting other people push their agenda on us. We end up with a seemingly urgent request from a client and there goes our entire plan for a highly effective and productive day at the workplace.

2. Once the seemingly important task is handled, we might have colleagues dropping by to say a quick 5 minute “Hi”.

First off, a quick 5 minute distraction is never that quick. Even if you spend 5 minutes saying “Hi” to your friend, your mind will take much longer to go back to the task on hand and focus on it.

3. Then, you might get another email or you might have a meeting and so on….

There are tons of distractions in the workplace and they are all going to work against you and make you a highly ineffective time manager if you keep on allowing other people to steal your time.

Am I suggesting that effective time management requires isolating yourself from others and not helping them?

Not at all, what I am suggesting is that you need to manage your distractions well.

Check your distractions against your highest priorities and if they make sense, sure go around and solve the problem.

If the distraction doesn’t make sense, write it down and then review it later.

Your focus is too important to allow other people to steal it!