What does it feel like when you’re “in a flow?”

Flow: focused, productive, fully immersed in your task. Headspace describes a flow state as “that sense of fluidity between your body and mind, where you are totally absorbed by and deeply focused on something, beyond the point of distraction.” 

Unfortunately, some distractions can worm their way in, disrupting even your most epic flow state. In these cases, interruptions are especially annoying and frustrating. Here are some tips to help you avoid distractions.

How to Avoid Distractions

Here are a few of the most common workplace distractions and how to kick them to the curb. 

A Barrage of Emails and Chats

Receiving a constant stream of emails, texts, or notifications from other personal message platforms is distracting. Especially since rarely are these alerts of an urgent nature.

“Heading to the breakroom. Anyone need anything?”

McKinsey found that the average employee spends 28 percent of their time checking email. That’s more than 10 hours per workweek. And it’s not just the reading. It’s the responding, as well as the time it takes someone to get back into their flow state after being distracted. Which, by the way, is an average of 25 minutes per distraction.  

How to prevent it: 

• Use communication as a tool: while it’s important to share information between workers, managing alerts and notifications shouldn’t be an employee’s entire job (with the exception of roles like customer service). Choose your emails to others wisely and limit them as much as possible. It often helps to schedule windows of time on your calendar to read and respond to emails. Outside of those hours, turn notifications off.
• Encourage short video calls: Psychology Today reports that “face-to-face communication is 34 percent more effective than email.” This doesn’t mean everyone needs to be in person. A Zoom call will do just fine. Sometimes, it’s far easier and faster to resolve a discussion this way versus reading and writing back. 
• Create Team Quiet Hours: Setting aside a block of time each day or week where no one is allowed to email or send a chat to a coworker unless it’s an emergency. Employees can use this time to focus on work.
• Establish collaboration times: Think of this as the opposite of Quiet Hours. Every team requires some level of collaboration, so try setting up “Office Hours” just like your favorite professor in school. This is a time where your coworkers/direct reports can come to you with any issues, projects, or approvals with which they might need your assistance. Employees can also use these hours to work on group projects.  

Pointless Meetings

We’ve all heard the joke about how “this meeting could have been an email.” Truthfully, it probably could have been! A survey found that 72 percent of the time, meetings are viewed as ineffective. 

In the same survey, Atlassian reported that 62 percent of employees are invited to meetings that don’t state a goal in the invite. Without a goal, it’s hard to justify the meeting and even more difficult to prepare for it. 

Also, keep in mind that some people work differently. For example, brainstorming meetings might not be where some employees shine, but they are more than capable of generating great ideas once they’ve had some time to think. For others, those types of meetings are an opportunity for on-the-fly innovation.

Meetings don’t have to be a distraction. Sometimes they play a vital role in our jobs. But there are ways to make sure you’re making the most of those meetings. 

How to prevent it: 

• Create a meeting agenda: before scheduling the meeting, determine exactly what you hope to accomplish. Outline your objectives for the meeting so you can provide it to other attendees, helping them maximize their contribution.
• Invite only essential staff: not everyone needs to attend every meeting. After creating your agenda, be picky about who needs to be there. You may feel inclined to invite an entire team to a meeting, but be prepared to explain why. Work on creating psychological safety in your organization so that when someone isn’t invited to a meeting, they know it’s for their own benefit and not because they’re getting left out.
• Create action items for each attendee: over the course of the meeting, issues will arise that need to be addressed. Ensure each person in the meeting leaves with a specific task they need to complete. If they leave with no tasks, they probably didn’t need to be there to begin with. 
• Decline non-essential meetings: if you’re invited to a meeting that doesn’t necessarily align with your role, reach out to the person who scheduled it to clarify their expectations for your contribution. If they don’t have a clear idea, let them know that you’re happy to address any unanswered questions after the meeting is over.

Access to Every Bit of Information in the Known Universe in Your Pocket (AKA Your Smartphone)

Most people in the U.S. now own a smartphone. They help us stay in touch with our loved ones, work, and the world at large. For better or worse, we are the most connected we have ever been. 

However, one survey found that employees waste an average of two hours per day looking at their phones. Those hours can be costly. But most people are guilty of being on their phones just a little bit too much.

How to prevent it:

You can institute policies around phone usage while employees are on the clock, but your employees may view that as the adult equivalent of babysitting. You can force people to leave their phones in lockers or at the front desk, but what if they have some sort of family emergency?  One strategy could be to remind employees of the non-monetary cost of distractions. A Digital Distraction and Workplace Safety survey from Screen Education found that smartphones are a significant safety concern. 

• 14 percent of respondents said there had been at least one smartphone-related accident in their workplace. Of those accidents:
  • 59 percent caused property damage
  • 50 percent caused injury or death
• These numbers are more jarring in industrial settings. 26 percent of those respondents claimed there had been a smartphone-related accident in their workplace that caused:
  • Property damage – 75 percent
  • Injury or death – 58 percent

Everyone should be aware of their surroundings at all times.  You could also: 

• Offer more schedule flexibility: when possible, allowing workers a chance to decide when and how they work (within reason) can help reduce phone distractions.
• Create times and spaces for breaks: when people have a place to go for a bit of respite, they can use that time to catch up on personal emails and messages.

Bottom line: only you as a leader can decide how you want to manage people and their phone usage. 

A Constant Stream of Visitors

When you’re at your desk cranking out work for your latest project, the last thing you need is to be interrupted by a wandering visitor who doesn’t know where they need to be. And if you happen to be closest to the lobby or front door, you’re their prime target. We call this Person Nearest the Door (PND) Syndrome. 

PND can happen in any organization. When delivery personnel, job candidates, vendors, or others enter the building, and there’s no one to greet them immediately, they either come bother you, or stand there awkwardly until some poor soul takes pity on them and shows them where to go. 

How to prevent it:

This is a problem with a very simple fix: a visitor management system (VMS). A VMS like The Receptionist for iPad is a good way to route your visitors to the right place. The system is highly customizable, allowing you to ensure that the right visitors get to the right person.

Toxic Culture

A culture where workers are rude or disrespectful to one another is also distracting. It’s hard to get work done in a hostile environment.  An article from MIT Sloan Management Review breaks toxic culture down into five attributes:

• Disrespectful: lack of consideration or courtesy for others
• Noninclusive: inequity among marginalized individuals (LGBTQ, disability, racial, etc)
• Unethical: dishonesty or non-compliant practices
• Cutthroat: Throwing others under the bus, taking credit for a colleague’s work
• Abusive: Bullying and harassment 

If your culture contains any of these five elements, you may have a problem on your hands. 

How to prevent it:

Changing workplace culture can’t happen overnight. It’s a slow shift that takes intentionality.  Here are several steps you can take to get started:

• Acknowledge the problem: it’s tough to admit it, but if you are losing your best talent, your culture might be driving them away. Exit interviews can help you find the root cause.
• Conduct a survey: a good way to hear from all of your employees is to solicit their anonymous feedback. 
• Be prepared to act on their responses. Having employees fill out a survey and make no changes as a result will lead them to believe that their voices don’t matter and that your efforts to improve your culture are purely performative. 

A Quick Reality Check

Distractions cannot always be avoided. The important thing is to figure out ways to get back into your flow state after a distraction. Some strategies include:

• Playing lo-fi music through noise-canceling headphones
• Setting a distraction timer – give yourself 5-10 minutes every hour to take a quick break from work
• Being selective about who and what should get your attention when you’re focused
• Leaving a trail of breadcrumbs – make a little note about what you were doing before you got distracted and the next steps you were intending to take

And, keep in mind that not all distractions are bad. We can get distracted by good news or our families sometimes, and that’s OK.  It’s also not reasonable for managers to expect their employees to be heads down, producing for eight hours per day. Humans need breaks to use the restroom, eat a snack, or take a moment to breathe and reset their brains.