The winners code

GEORGE CHINGARANDE | Tuesday August 27, 2013 00:00

The human being's most important gift is his life. Unfortunately, it is given him only once to live. With that one opportunity comes the only opportunity he will ever have to dream, pursue his dreams and reap the rewards of his endeavours.  No one has eternity to achieve his goals. From birth, life becomes an undeclared race against time.The wise human being must therefore come to terms with his mortality. Coming to terms with one's mortality means that one ought to live each day as if it were the last, and if you live each day as if it is your last day one day, whose date you know not, it will be true. One of the greatest impediments to your achieving your goals that you will ever face is spelt INTERRUPTION.

Interruption is so important that it merits your serious attention and consideration. It may be the difference between you living a fulfilled life and dying with dreams unfulfilled. It may also be the difference between you being a very productive and achievement oriented individual, and being a social loafer who never gets anything of note done. A study done in America estimated that yearly the USA economy loses as much as 538 billion dollars to interruptions at work. Yes, you read right; 538 billion dollars. That is many times the GDPs of most developing countries for whom a GDP of a mere 50 billion dollars remains a pipe dream.  Furthermore, the same study reported that on average working people receive one interruption every eight minutes, and between six and eight interruptions per hour. In an eight hour working day this rate of interruptions adds up to approximately 60 interruptions. Minor interruptions can take up to five minutes while major interruptions can consume as much as 15 minutes and sometimes even more. An employee who suffers 50 interruptions per day, with each interruption lasting eight minutes will lose 400 minutes of productive time. And that is a good six hours out of eight working hours.  Interruptions, therefore, have huge consequences and implications to both the individual and the society. 

Put differently interruptions are a malignant cancer that need to be treated urgently.Interruptions occur when for one reason or another your attention is removed from the task that you are working on and diverted to another.Broadly, there are two sources of interruptions. These are self interruptions and external interruptions.Self interruptions occur when you shift your attention to another task before you complete the one you are working on.An example is when you work on a computer or laptop that has internet access. Most people find themselves wandering from their work to check emails, or even surf some other websites that have absolutely nothing to do with the current work. Another example is when someone working from home or studying constantly casts eyes on the television. By its very nature self interruption is generated by the self.

External interruptions occur when a source of stimuli other than the self interferes with the work at hand. There are three types of external interruptions and knowing them will help you guard yourself against them. The first type is the important and urgent interruption. If your boss comes into your office with an important assignment that is also urgent; what do you do? By their very nature important and urgent matters require your attention. However, the mere fact that it is important and urgent does not mean that it has to automatically jump the queue. If you are already busy with weightier or equally weighty assignments, you can kindly and politely inform your boss of your schedule, and then ask him to help you decide which of the items on the daily agenda to replace with his request. If it is in the best interests of the organisation and you are genuinely preoccupied with weighty organisational affairs, an understanding boss will likely take his request to someone else. However, if what you were currently doing is not as important as the request; then the interruption can take precedence in which case it is a positive interruption in the sense that it advances the best interests of the organisation.

The second type of interruption is the important but not urgent interruption. Not all important matters must be addressed immediately. Resolving a dispute between two of your subordinates or two of your friends may be important; but can it not wait for a more auspicious time? Secondly, are you the only one who can resolve this matter? Is there no possibility for delegating? Important matters that are not urgent need not interrupt you because with these issues delay is not synonymous with negligence and dereliction of duty.The third type of interruptions consists of blatant time wasters. This lists includes things such as unnecessary phone calls either by yourself or by others; unannounced social visits; idle chatter in the office and attention seekers. Some people can be described as high maintenance and low impact. They take up a lot of your time with their petty issues; and at the same time they contribute very little to the organisation and also to you. However, they are a reality that need to be dealt with.

Regardless of the source and the nature of the interruption, the fact is that interruptions cost about a quarter of the time available to you in a year. Without a proper and viable strategy, interruption can become the single biggest threat to your ambition and productivity. We wish to leave you with two questions. These are; how many of your waking hours are frittered away through interruptions and what are you doing about it?