Category: “Personal Productivity”

Interruptions are the number one public enemy in the field of personal productivity. If you don’t get things done on time and you need to work late, or even on weekends, it’s probably because there have been many interruptions at work. In other words, it’s not that you have that much to do, but that you’re not good at managing your attention.

Some years ago I attended a business creation and management course at the University of Alicante. This course lasted ten weeks and classes were taught by different lecturers which most of them were either advisers or executives in large and medium-sized companies.

Deadlines are approaching. An absent employee forces you to reassign work to others who are already complaining. An email has arrived that changes the direction of your day. You can’t keep up with your text messages. The printer just ran out of ink and no one knows why there aren’t more toner cartridges in the office.

Multitasking is a myth, at least in human beings. It turns out that this ability to carry out various things at the same time that some gladiators of modern life seem to have doesn’t exist as such.

Many companies design open work spaces so that all employees are in constant communication, since they believe that higher collaboration will allow them to be more productive. Group brainstorming dynamics are used again and again as a mechanism to get more and better ideas about any subject. In our society, and especially in the business world, while cooperative group work is very much appreciated, individual work is undervalued.