Lost in Transition

Every interruption in your day creates lost time.

Time lost to the interruption itself.

And time lost to remembering what you were doing, refocusing, and restarting.

The more interruptions — no matter how small they are — the less productive you will be.

As you may know, I worked from a home office for 7 years. I only recently began working from an office that is separate from my home.

The biggest reason I rented an office was to reduce the number of interruptions in my work day. On any given day, I might have experienced one or more of the following interruptions:

• The doorbell ringing — and nobody close enough to get there in time but me.

• Hearing the home phone ring multiple times in a row without being answered — wondering if it was something important.

• One of my kids asking me for a snack.

• One of my kids telling me he is bored.

• My wife asking me if I can watch the kids on some time/day later in the week.

• My wife updating me on evening or weekend plans.

• Hearing one of my kids yelling or crying outside.

• Saying goodbye to my family every time they run an errand. Saying hello when they get back.

• Hearing a “situation” with one of my children — feeling like I need to intervene.

• My son turning on the keyboard piano and pounding on it at full volume.

• My wife asking for help lifting something heavy.

• Helping unload groceries when my wife gets back from the grocery store.

• Being called to lunch while I’m not at a good stopping point.

• My wife asking if I’d like to go on a walk — or go to the gym — and feeling like I can’t say no.

I’m sure this is a partial list, and it’s already quite long.

Since I’ve begun working at the new office, I’m happy to report that my productivity is way up. The lack of interruptions is great. I can actually start writing something and finish writing it without losing my train of thought to some unimportant interruption.

Just remember: Every interruption in your day creates a period of transition where you must leave your current work and then come back to it.

This jerky process of starting and stopping — like a car stuck in a stop-and-go traffic jam — is massively inefficient.

And if it continues for a period of days or weeks, it will seriously harm your productivity… maybe even cause you to miss an important deadline.

With that in mind, I’ve just published a 1,292-word article for Copywriting Code members that’s all about productivity tips for copywriters and anybody who writes copy.

If you haven’t joined yet, you can sign up here:

http://clickora.com/CopywritingCode

-Ryan M. Healy