Excerpt from an interview with Bob Pozen, author of Extreme Productivity: Boost Your Results, Reduce Your Hours.
In this hyper-connected world, it’s easy to get distracted. How do you recommend workers stay focused?
Email and mobile phones can be great contributors to productivity, but also great detractors by wasting lots of time. So I urge you to ignore a large chunk of your emails and then use OHIO—short for “only handle it once”—for the important ones. If an email is important, respond to it immediately. If you wait a few days, you will forget it or take several minutes to find it again. As to your cell phone, I strongly urge you to get a separate ring tone for your boss so that you can easily ignore all other after-hours calls if you so desire. And make an agreement with your boss that you’ll be unreachable during certain times—such as family dinner. Don’t be afraid to “unplug”—turn off your phone, and close your laptop.
What is the best way to efficiently use your time at the office?
To use your time efficiently at work, you need to prepare in advance. First, you should write down your goals for the next week and the next year, and then carefully consider which ones are most important to you and your organization. Next, you should each night go over your schedule for the next day and see if it is consistent with your highest priorities. You might find that your schedule is mainly reactive to the needs of others, rather than your own goals. To better align your schedule with your priorities, don’t be afraid to decline invitations to unnecessary meetings, and recognize that certain tasks only require a quick and dirty effort.
Read full interview by Dan Schawbel in Forbes
