Tip #4: Establish Deferral Policies for Colleagues who might Interrupt your "Sui Generis" Work
There are three kinds of distraction: technological, biological, and sociological
Studies show that distractions at work come from the same small number of places over and over again. There are three main kinds of distractions. The very tools we work with such as our email client, our phones, and our web browsers can stop working for us and start working against us. Media or technological interruption is one kind of distraction from work.
Another kind of distraction comes from ourselves as when we remember something we had forgotten, or when it occurs to us that we have a pressing matter to attend to soon, or simply when our minds wander. If something off-topic comes to mind while you are doing your sui generis work, let it go. Or if you feel the need, write down a note on a 3x5 card or PostIt so you can come back to it later.
This is part of a series. See main series page “My Best Productivity Recommendations, Boiled Down and Annotated.”
The third kind of distraction comes from the other human beings you share your world with. I have suggested you protect as best as you can the time you have set aside for your sui generis work. But being rude could backfire. Rather than sending away a colleague who wanders into your workspace with a curt tone, I suggest you say as gently as possible, “I’m deep in the weeds at the moment, can I come find you in 10 minutes?”
Additionally, you might want to announce or make public somehow that you will be following these kinds of deferral policies when you are doing your most important and complicated work, your sui generis work. You could utilize a trope from show business where they have an “On Air” sign which everyone knows means you must not interrupt what’s going on. You could have some similar sign outside your workspace along with a way for a visitor to leave you a message indicating they came by, like maybe a small whiteboard on your door.
In any case, you should use the idea of the “extended will” to set up preemptive bulwarks against potential distractions—technological, biological and sociological.
When you really come to understand the dual process theory of the mind (as I will layout in a later newsletter/post) you will realize you need to protect yourself against the untoward potential pit falls your unconscious is going to try to throw your way. Nonconsciousness (which is not a word, but which should be) tends to be stronger than consciousness: a habit always has an advantage over the willpower trying to resist the habit.
Do not count overmuch on willpower. Even Roy Baumeister, the author of Willpower, says so. (More on that later too.) But more than just protecting against your nonconsciousness, you should also learn how to harness the power of your nonconsciousness. Instead of trying to force yourself using your weakest toolset, you ought to try to foster automaticity and engage your strongest toolset (your unconscious activation system) by setting up rituals, habits, and little bits of “extended will.”