Have you ever done the math on how much distractions and interruptions are costing you? It is pretty scary. The average worker loses 60 hours a month to distractions. That’s 15 hours a week. 3 hours a day. Even if the research is only half-right you can stand to recover up to 90 productive minutes a day when you ditch unnecessary distractions. Here’s the research, and the math:
- It takes more than 23 minutes to get back on task after you are distracted. It doesn’t matter how long the distraction is or whether it is a good or bad distraction.
- Multiply that times your hourly rate. If you are only billing $250 per hour then you are missing out on nearly $180,000 in billable time.
- Ok, that’s probably overstating it. Let’s cut it by half. That’s $90,000 a year. Per attorney.
- Even if you only recovered a third of that time you’d add over $59,000 to your bottom line just by cutting back on distractions and interruptions.
How much better would your life or practice be if you could recapture just a fraction of the lost billings and productivity?
Isn’t the answer to that question always going to be “yes”?
Henry was a private coaching client who struggled with this – as most do. The first step to solving the problem was to gather data for about a week. It didn’t take long for us to see patterns about his distractions, where they came from, and how long they took. Of course, some distractions were really good – like new clients. And there was a whole bunch that was not as good. Some were inflicted by staff, others by himself.
The goal wasn’t zero distractions – that isn’t practical. We found huge positive impacts by focusing to recover as little as 10% of that time – even if it was just deferring the distraction to another non-peak time.
Your roadmap to controlling distractions should include:
- Make a note. Keep a notepad and pen by your desk. When you get distracted jot down the reason – without judgment or beating yourself up. Then keep going. Doing this for a couple of days should give you a pretty good list. I know it does for me.
- Look for trends. With a few days of data go back and look for patterns and trends. You’ll probably find that 80% of the distractions came from 20% of the sources. You will probably see some things you didn’t want to see – which is pretty normal. Don’t get down on yourself. We all get distracted pretty easily these days. Instead, simply get curious about what could you do to moderate the distraction or avoid it?
- Change one thing at a time and track your progress. Resolutions to change often fail because you take on too much at once, and you can’t see progress. Picking a single thing increases your chances of success – and it helps you build momentum.
Finally, you may believe (like Henry did) that you don’t have time to do this exercise – or that distractions are uncontrollable so it isn’t worth trying. Don’t fall for that story.
You can create the space to do this simple task. And when you do you will find more time and focus than you thought possible. The revenue will follow.
So start today. You’ve got the time.
-Doug
P.S… I find that it really helps to have an accountability partner for these types of self-improvement tasks. If you’d like to learn more just CLICK HERE for a free strategy consultation