“The average American worker has fifty interruptions a day, of which seventy percent have nothing to do with work.”
~W. Edwards Deming (American Consultant, Stastistician and Educator)
Why You Should Do This
Picking up the phone to talk to someone not only distracts you from your work, it also wastes your time. This is bad, especially when you are trying to finish your work quickly and hope to have some peace and quiet during your free time while working from home.
You will want to minimize any and all electronic access to you before you exit the office, starting with the phone. The key to solving this problem is train the people who call you on a consistent basis to email you first if they have a problem.
Common Fears
“But what if I miss something important by not picking up?”
I have found that when something is extremely urgent, the caller will usually leave a voicemail detailing the reason for their call.
“But what if the voicemail they leave asks me to call them back?”
To prevent them from asking you to call back in the first place, state in your voicemail message that you are not taking calls at the moment as you are busy and do not want to be interrupted. Also state that they should send you an email explaining the issue they are having trouble with and that you will get back to them by email as soon as you have time available.
“What if my phone does not have a silent mode and they keep calling despite the voicemail?”
For persistant callers who choose to ignore the voicemail, set a time limit on your availability when you pick up and ask immdiately what you can do to help them. This will force them to get straight to the point. If they say they’ll call back when you have more time, insist that you are not available to talk later and that you can spare 2 minutes if they hurry.
Take Action
For the next week, let every call that comes your way ring straight to voicemail and see how many emergencies you miss as a result. You want to do everything you can to drop the number of calls you receive to a minimum or eliminate them altogether if you can.
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Yasuo Long believes that all employees should have the right to design their lifestyle according to their needs in order to maintain their health, their relationships and their happiness. In pursuit of this, he quit the 9-to-5 and became a telecommuter to give himself the time and mental freedom to discover what it really means to live with direction and purpose.
