Latest / Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing / #304| Why Every "Quick Question" Costs You Your Train of Thought and Leaves You Feeling Overwhelmed
Transcript
- 0:00Michelle Gauthier: When you listen today, you'll learn why every, hey, I've got a quick question for you costs you your train of thought and leaves you feeling overwhelmed.
- 0:11Michelle Gauthier: You're listening to Overwhelmed Working Woman, the podcast that helps you be more calm and more productive by doing less.
- 0:19Michelle Gauthier: I'm your host, Michelle Gauthier, a former Overwhelmed Working Woman and current life coach.
- 0:24Michelle Gauthier: On this show, we unpack the stress and pressure that today's working woman experiences.
- 0:29Michelle Gauthier: And in each episode, you'll get a strategy to bring more calm, ease, and relaxation to your life.
- 0:36Michelle Gauthier: Hi, friend.
- 0:40Michelle Gauthier: Thanks for joining today.
- 0:41Michelle Gauthier: You know that feeling when you finally sit down to do that one thing that needs to get done, but requires all of your brain space and you're really in it.
- 0:49Michelle Gauthier: And then someone pops by and says, Hey, do you have a minute?
- 0:52Michelle Gauthier: And before you've even decided, you're like, sure, what's up?
- 0:55Michelle Gauthier: And 20 minutes later, they're gone, and you're staring at your screen with no idea where you left off and your train of thought is just gone.
- 1:01Michelle Gauthier: And getting back to it takes way more than a minute.
- 1:04Michelle Gauthier: Way longer than that minute you agreed to give away.
- 1:07Michelle Gauthier: If you think about doing that a couple times a day, and at the end of the day you feel behind and overwhelmed, maybe this is why.
- 1:14Michelle Gauthier: If you feel like you're doing your best work in the middle, in between, in the space in between, filling everyone else's needs, this is a great episode for you.
- 1:23Michelle Gauthier: Today I'm going to give you the actual words to say and a few things to do before anyone even has a chance to interrupt you.
- 1:29Michelle Gauthier: When you listen today, you'll learn how to set up your focus time so nobody can interrupt you in the first place, what to say when someone gets through anyway, and what happens when you hold the line in a story from my very own household.
- 1:41Michelle Gauthier: Okay, so think about where you're working.
- 1:44Michelle Gauthier: In my case, my office is in my home.
- 1:46Michelle Gauthier: Maybe you work from home too, maybe you have an office, maybe you have an open concept office where you're just sitting in the desk in the middle of everything.
- 1:54Michelle Gauthier: But think about setting your situation up to not be interrupted as much as possible.
- 2:01Michelle Gauthier: Just in the past week, I have had three or maybe four clients where during our sessions we were talking about this problem where you can never get the deep work done.
- 2:11Michelle Gauthier: I talked about this a little bit on last Thursday's podcast where we talked about using the Eisenhower matrix to figure out what is important but not urgent that you really need to focus on to make progress going forward.
- 2:23Michelle Gauthier: And I've been noticing this trend when I'm talking to my clients lately that they aren't able to get that focus time in, often due to interruptions from other people or text interruptions, email interruptions, notifications from apps, interruptions, and those kinds of things.
- 2:40Michelle Gauthier: So the first thing to do when you're thinking about how can I get this focus time in is make it hard for other people to interrupt you.
- 2:47Michelle Gauthier: I'm gonna tell you some things that you can say when people do interrupt you, but first make yourself impossible to interrupt or do your very best job at doing it.
- 2:56Michelle Gauthier: Here are a couple tips that I have learned over time and that my clients have implemented and had a lot of success with.
- 3:02Michelle Gauthier: Number one is put your phone away from you.
- 3:05Michelle Gauthier: Face down on the desk is too tempting.
- 3:07Michelle Gauthier: Get up and walk somewhere and set your phone elsewhere.
- 3:11Michelle Gauthier: The other one is if you have a door, close it and tell people what that means.
- 3:16Michelle Gauthier: A closed door only works if people in your office know that that means please don't knock.
- 3:21Michelle Gauthier: And again, in the past week, I have had clients tell me, well, when I close my door, people just come and knock on my door.
- 3:27Michelle Gauthier: So you have to train people that it means when my door is closed, I cannot be interrupted.
- 3:33Michelle Gauthier: I work from home, so no co-workers are interrupting me, but my children sure do, especially in the summer when they're off.
- 3:39Michelle Gauthier: They know that if my office door is closed and they hear me talking because I'm on a client session or recording a podcast or something, they absolutely won't come in.
- 3:48Michelle Gauthier: But if my door is just closed and they don't hear me, sometimes they will poke through the door or stick their foot in the door.
- 3:55Michelle Gauthier: So I have to remind them if my office door is closed, you can't come in.
- 3:59Michelle Gauthier: And if the doors are open, you're welcome to come in.
- 4:02Michelle Gauthier: The other thing to do is close your email.
- 4:04Michelle Gauthier: Put your instant messenger on, do not disturb.
- 4:07Michelle Gauthier: And if you have notifications that come up on your computer, because we know your phone's already across the room, right?
- 4:13Michelle Gauthier: But if you have notifications that come up on your computer, turn those off.
- 4:18Michelle Gauthier: Think about what you're setting yourself up for.
- 4:20Michelle Gauthier: If your phone is out of reach and your email is closed and your messages are on DD, how could anyone even interrupt you?
- 4:27Michelle Gauthier: I guess they could if they walk in and ask, do you have a minute?
- 4:31Michelle Gauthier: I'm gonna tell you a couple of things that you can reply back to that.
- 4:34Michelle Gauthier: The first suggestion that I have is just to say, I do not.
- 4:38Michelle Gauthier: If that makes you cringe because you think that feels so rude, just remember, but the question is, do you have a minute?
- 4:44Michelle Gauthier: It's a real question, and I do not is a real answer.
- 4:49Michelle Gauthier: If you feel like you can't say that and you want to soften it a little bit, you can add when you do have time.
- 4:54Michelle Gauthier: For example, I do not right now.
- 4:55Michelle Gauthier: Can you come back at 11?
- 4:57Michelle Gauthier: It's so important to remember that what someone else perceives to be an emergency is not their emergency.
- 5:04Michelle Gauthier: Another thing that you could say is to ask that person, is this something that needs to be solved in the next 30 minutes or the next hour or however long you're planning on doing your focus time?
- 5:15Michelle Gauthier: And if the answer is no, then you can say, okay, why don't you send me an email and let me know what you need, or I will come and find you when I'm finished, or come back to my office at two, or whatever you want to say to them.
- 5:28Michelle Gauthier: But if you are working the kind of business where it truly could be something that's an emergency, that is a great question to ask.
- 5:34Michelle Gauthier: When I was thinking about this in my life, like I said, I don't have coworkers here at the house.
- 5:38Michelle Gauthier: Everybody who does work for me is working in a different location, but my children are my most frequent interrupters.
- 5:44Michelle Gauthier: And last summer I was working on this article and I was really focused on it.
- 5:47Michelle Gauthier: And my daughter came in and told me that she needed to go to Dunkin' Donuts because it was National Donut Day and you can get donuts for free, but the lines have been pretty long, so probably now would be a great time for us to go.
- 6:00Michelle Gauthier: It was like, oh my gosh, your donut emergency is not my emergency.
- 6:04Michelle Gauthier: I'll be out in like an hour.
- 6:06Michelle Gauthier: And then I suggested too that she empty the dishwasher before she asked me anything else.
- 6:10Michelle Gauthier: Notice I set myself up not to be interrupted.
- 6:13Michelle Gauthier: I got interrupted anyway.
- 6:15Michelle Gauthier: I didn't say no forever.
- 6:17Michelle Gauthier: I said I'll be out in an hour.
- 6:19Michelle Gauthier: And then I asked her to do something else for me in the meantime.
- 6:22Michelle Gauthier: And I felt very clean about that because I did not set it up like today's my day off, and we can do anything you want.
- 6:29Michelle Gauthier: And if you want to go get donuts, we can do it.
- 6:31Michelle Gauthier: No, it was just a regular work day.
- 6:32Michelle Gauthier: And I thought it was actually really nice of me to take her an hour later if I would go ahead and pat myself on the back here.
- 6:38Michelle Gauthier: And here's what happens when you hold this line.
- 6:40Michelle Gauthier: We are always constantly teaching people how to treat us.
- 6:44Michelle Gauthier: So when you take your focus time seriously, everyone else learns to do that as well.
- 6:50Michelle Gauthier: A couple weeks ago, my daughter forgot her golf shoes on a day that she had a golf match, and so she went to school and I had no idea that she had forgotten her shoes.
- 6:58Michelle Gauthier: And I showed up to the match to watch her, and she was playing in the sandals that she had worn to school.
- 7:04Michelle Gauthier: And I was like, What are you doing with those shoes?
- 7:06Michelle Gauthier: She's like, I realized I forgot them, but I didn't want to interrupt you at work.
- 7:10Michelle Gauthier: And I was so happy.
- 7:11Michelle Gauthier: I was like, Yes, it is working.
- 7:13Michelle Gauthier: It is working.
- 7:14Michelle Gauthier: In fact, she later decided that playing in sandals was her good luck charm.
- 7:18Michelle Gauthier: I don't know if we really need to go that far.
- 7:20Michelle Gauthier: But playing in those shoes was a great lesson for her to remember to bring her golf shoes next time.
- 7:25Michelle Gauthier: And I love the fact that she thought about calling me and then didn't call me because she was able to evaluate this isn't actually an emergency and it's definitely not an emergency on my mom's part.
- 7:35Michelle Gauthier: If you think that makes me a mean mom, that's okay.
- 7:38Michelle Gauthier: You can.
- 7:38Michelle Gauthier: You can think that if you want.
- 7:39Michelle Gauthier: But I feel like I'm teaching her important life lessons.
- 7:42Michelle Gauthier: So this week, as you're going through your week, just try to pick one thing.
- 7:46Michelle Gauthier: Pick a focus block and set it up so nobody can interrupt you.
- 7:50Michelle Gauthier: And then if and when people do, somebody steps in and says, Do you have a minute?
- 7:54Michelle Gauthier: You'll know exactly what to say.
- 7:56Michelle Gauthier: Here's the whole thing.
- 7:58Michelle Gauthier: First, set up your focus time so no one can interrupt it.
- 8:01Michelle Gauthier: Put your phone away, close your door, close your email, put yourself on do not disturb.
- 8:06Michelle Gauthier: If people are interrupting you via text message, that is your behavior.
- 8:10Michelle Gauthier: You are checking that text message.
- 8:12Michelle Gauthier: So put everything away, make yourself uninterruptible.
- 8:15Michelle Gauthier: And then if someone does come in to interrupt you, you can just use one of the lines that we talked about, such as, is this something that needs to be solved in the next 30 minutes?
- 8:24Michelle Gauthier: No, I do not have a minute.
- 8:26Michelle Gauthier: Your emergency is not my emergency, and I will be out in X minutes.
- 8:30Michelle Gauthier: Just figure out which one of those works best for you in your situation.
- 8:34Michelle Gauthier: Have a great week.
- 8:36Michelle Gauthier: Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.
- 8:42Michelle Gauthier: If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at MichelleGauthier.com.
- 8:48Michelle Gauthier: See you next week.