Two minute moments

Microsoft's own data puts the gap between workplace interruptions at about two minutes. It will come as no surprise that they are mostly emails and Teams/Slack messages, each one grabbing attention if only for a moment.

They may all be perfectly reasonable, however, put together they will increase stress and anxiety as the work seemingly piles up whilst the time to do it diminishes.

If you don’t feel like you can disable notifications, then another option would be to set aside a small amount of time throughout the day to ‘clear’ what you’ve been sent. Some leaders that I’ve worked with have excelled at this process and have now reduced their clearing process to two minutes.

They scan emails and messages and quickly determine whether they are for information or action. Actions get added to their list or else replied to (in short so as to prevent a time drain) immediately, before they move on with their day. Some are using AI to do this work for them.

This way they avoid the ever-expanding ‘unread’ notifications and always feel in control of the information they need and the action that’s required.

But mainly this process makes most notifications easy to ignore, knowing that they have two-minute moments set aside to address them throughout their day. It’s a great idea you can steal. One that requires a little discipline, but that makes a huge difference.