What are these vampires doing to your life?
If you are serious about being more productive then you might want to think about identifying what Dan Kennedy calls the ‘time vampires’ in your day.
I was recently talking to a senior scientist who is overloaded with work, too many things to do already and finding she can’t get ahead because every time she tries to get on with what she had planned for the day – someone interrupts he with something “important” - does any of this sound familiar?
If it does you might want some help in recognising the time vampires in your life.
Now it’s not as easy as spotting some pale stalker in a dark cape, fangs dripping with blood who only comes out at night! No these vampires look just like normal everyday people and they stalk offices, homes and workplaces across the world. Luckily despite the fact they look like normal people, they will always give themselves away with phrases like…
· Sorry to bother you…
· I can see you’re busy…
· Do you have a few minutes for a quick chat…?
· Can I just “borrow” a little bit of your time?
Now I know sometimes things urgent things come up and we all want to be helpful but urgent isn’t always important and even if it is important – important for whom? Is it really more important to you than what you were working on?
This lady I mentioned earlier really wanted to do a good job and as a result hadn’t found it easy to say no to people’s urgent work requests. The problem was that she found that even if the conversation only last the promised few minutes, it could easily knock 15-30 minutes productive time out of her day. This is all too easy to understand when you realise you have allowed this vampires’ priorities to break your productive state and when this happened how often does another distraction slip in?
“I’ll just check my emails…. Dam there goes another half hour!”
I know we all want to be friendly and helpful but what these people are really saying is I have a problem and it is important enough TO ME to disrupt your time – is their problem really more important to you than getting your stuff done?
You might like to think of them coming in with a bag of smelly fruit and saying I need to get rid of this and I’d like to take it off me so I can forget about it, OK?
If being productive is important to you and you recognise these vampires in your life then I guess you’ve already tried a few things to clear this, but they can be persistent at first can’t they?
Assuming you can’t find somewhere quite, put a cross on the wall and some garlic at the door before settling down for some “productive prime time”
What can you do?
The absolute first thing I’d suggest is stop blaming them and take responsibility for allowing this to happen. Let’s face it people do what works, if they disturb you once and get what they want immediately – what do you think they are going to do next time they want some of your valuable time?
Accepting personal responsibility may not seem natural at first after all, there are things that can seem out of our control but accepting responsibility will always give you more choices as to how to respond.
When you first set boundaries in anything, the people around you who are used to the old way will test them, your job is to defend them, (maintaining rapport) the more you defend them the more people will respect them.
So if someone calls in and says “I can see you’re busy but this will only take 5 minutes”, you can say something like.
“Ok it’s good that it’ll only take 5 minutes but you can see I’m really busy so I’ll deal with it when I‘ve completed this at 3pm, OK?”
Or
“No worries, if it’s really urgent I can rearrange some stuff I’ve got planned for 3pm and do it then, how would you like me to let you know it’s complete?”
Then turn around and get back on with what you had planned.
If it’s your boss, then it might take a bit more tact but you could always point out what you were doing and just say “Yes and would it be OK if I finish this first because I promised it to X by this afternoon”
The key to making this work is to recognise that it’s no good being productive doing what’s important to other people (unless that’s the purpose of your job) you can only be really effective and productive if you are focusing on what is important to you.
It might not be easy to begin with and they might “fight back at first” But if you need a bit of extra motivation to stick with it and reclaim your time. I’d encourage you to consider your time as the precious moments of your life; you wouldn’t let people sneak in to your office and steal out of your purse or wallet!
So defending your time is just as important, don’t you think?
The point of this article isn’t to give you all the answers, it’s merely to help you recognise these “vampires” are out there sucking away your productivity and to get you curious about how you can deal effectively with them when they get you cornered ;o)
What do you think? Can you suggest any other tips? What challenges can you see when you think about dealing with these vampires who are sucking the time out of your day?
Remember how the Sun melts vampires in films, how would it feel have them melt out of your life for good?
Bye for now,
Anth.
July 21st, 2008 at 10:18 am
The Time Vampires in my life are not people interrupting with trivial matters its me. I am a Time Vampire whilst listening to the article I drew a box the lines of the box was like a fence. Inside the fence is me and what I want to be doing with my time, outside (that I’m fending off is the Time Vampires that hold me back trying to suck the time away from me.
Now that I see them as Time Vamps : Unproductive, Lazy, Silly things that they are I should be flying now.
Thanks
Rhonda