I like Pierre Khawande’s Results Curve model for managing interruptions and balancing focused work with time for collaboration.
Pierre Khawand’s Results Curve
Pierre Khawand has an intriguing E-book out “The Results Curve: How to Manage Focused and Collaborative Time” that makes the following suggestions for increasing your personal effectiveness in the face of the plethora of sources for interruption and distraction we can leave ourselves vulnerable to if we are not careful.
He has five key observations/suggestions based on years of research into productivity:
- The Results Curve: plan for 40 minute segments of focused activity. While different timeboxing techniques suggest setting aside 15, 25, or 30 minute blocks of time for focused execution, Kawand’s research suggests that after 30 minutes you are now fully in gear and another 10 minutes of focused effort typical results in significant additional accomplishment.
- MicroPlan: take a minute to jot down three to six key steps or sub-tasks that you want to accomplish in your 40 minutes of focused activity.
- Use a Timer to help you stay in the zone for 40 minutes. With a watch or clock you need to keep checking which risks loss of focus, a timer will interrupt you at the end of your block but doesn’t distract you before then.
- Disable External Interruptions turn off your phone, turn off your e-mail, put a “do not disturb” sign on your cube or office door, turn off IM/Skype, and take steps to eliminate any distracting sounds.
- Follow Focus Time with Collaboration Time catch up on E-Mail/IM/Skype and return any calls that have come in.
The book is a 36 page briefing that’s worth 40 minutes of your time. If you find it useful I would check out his “Accomplishing More with Less” workbook.
Related Blog Posts
- Getting Work Done: Leveraging Calendars, Task Lists, and Project Plans
- PATCA Roundtable on Time Management includes a long list of my suggestions from the event.
- Tony Schwartz: Notice the Good, Cultivate Good Habits, Slow Down, and Do the Right Thing Schwartz suggests it’s more important to manage your energy than your time, among other useful insights.
- Focus Needs Buffers and Free Time Covers “buffer days” concept.
- Brad Pierce: Preserve Context in Writing to Manage Interruptions
- Asking Questions from a Caring Perspective includes a description of “the Spaniel Method” explores how the act of organizing your thoughts about a problem by explaining it to someone else can often help you solve it.
- Record to Remember, Pause to Reflect
- Six Tips for Entrepreneurs from “Becoming a Writer” by Dorothea Brande includes a more detailed description of “Morning Pages.”
- Cecily Drucker’s Startup Secrets goes into more detail on embracing the fertile void of sleepless nights–a form of “last minute panic” that is also called a charrette by architects and an all-nighter by students.
- 3×5 cards