Business Busters: 4 Common Work Distractions & How to Best Eliminate Them

Hannah Whittenly

June 02, 2017

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There are bound to be distractions around your workplace. While they may not be a serious problem, they can be very annoying at times. Distractions can elevate your stress and undermine both your job satisfaction and your ability to get things done. Those are bad things in the long term, and disastrous if they mean missing deadlines or overlooking critical tasks. You may not even be aware of all the distractions. Here are some common ones and ways to eliminate them.

1. Constant Emails

It seems the higher up the command chain you are the more emails you get. You know without looking that few will be vital, some will be pointless, and most can wait. However, if you don't keep up, you've got a constant backlog and your worry that you're missing something. Instead of opening and scanning each one, make a system of folders and move them based on the sender or the subject. Consider how they relate to your priorities.

2. Meeting Requests

The same is true of meetings. Some meetings you attend daily, such as progress reports. Other times you're swamped with meeting requests that really aren't your concern or are a poor use of your time. It eats up a good part of your day. Learn to say no whenever possible. If you do have more important things to do and need more time for your own projects, that's a perfectly legitimate excuse.

3. Task Lists

Keeping track of all these demands on time in a calendar or to-do list can be a distraction in itself. You may find yourself making errors on appointments, failing to return important calls, and re-scheduling or re-sorting your growing list of responsibilities. Get scheduling software that lets you drag-and-drop emails to the appropriate places, sends alerts when tasks are due, and allows you to set priorities. If there's a scheduling conflict, the higher priority always wins.

4. Noisy Environment

This can refer to anything that forces the background into your thoughts when you should be focused on work. This could be anything from chatty co-workers to rattling duct work. For the latter, enlist the help of a sheet metal fabricator, such as Degree C, that can provide insulation with noise-cancelling cladding to pipes and ductwork. Ask for peace and quiet when you could really use it.

Distractions at work, especially those that you can control, can really take a toll on a company’s ability to be productive. By tackling the above distractions, you’ll hopefully be able to increase your employees’ productivity and see results because of that.