You’ve been making do with a shrinking staff and a growing workload since about 2009, if your office is like most local governments. And I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that your local government’s residents haven’t called you to say, “Don’t worry. I know your budget was cut and you’re overworked, so it’s okay if you cut my services or keep me waiting.”

Like so many people in this era of tight budgets, you have too much to do and not enough time to do it. How can you change that equation? Cut your workload? Not likely, as that probably is defined by a statute or employment agreement.

Master Time Recovery

What is the answer? Create more time? Well, surprisingly, yes! You can create more time. Or to be precise, you can recover a huge amount of time that gets stolen from you every single day, without you even realizing it.

Just as surely as a slick pickpocket relieves you of your wallet while you never even notice it, “time bandits” spirit away one of your most precious possessions—your time.

That’s because we live and work in an “interruption culture.” It destroys productivity, work satisfaction, and life satisfaction. It should not be tolerated, and it can be changed. You just have to acquire new, entirely learnable skills.
 
1. Personalize the cost. To be truly motivated to make a big change like this, you need to calculate the time you lose to interruptions. Remember, it’s not just the interruption itself that throws you off task. There’s the time wasted to reassemble your thoughts and resources, a little staler this time.

There’s loss of momentum or physiological shortcuts created to accomplish the task. There’s frustration at having to regroup, which dissipates the energy that work thrives on. There is the distress and fatigue of having to make up for time lost. There’s the likelihood of errors, which take even more time to correct. If you’re like most, interruptions are costing you three to five hours a day.

2. Time lock for an interruption-free period. Time locking means carving out a specified period of time to devote to an important task, allowing no interruptions other than for emergencies. It means politely and gracefully explaining to those who could interrupt you why you’re time locking, why it’s in the interrupters’ best interest, letting them know how and when you will follow-up, and making sure they are comfortable with your explanation and plan.

Trust me, because I’ve taught people who at first did not believe they could persuade their bosses, colleagues, and customers—in your case, residents—why it would be better for all concerned if they could work uninterrupted for a period of time.

3. Focal lock against yourself. Even when we are not being interrupted by other people or by our own electronic devices, we interrupt ourselves by daydreaming or by other distractions. Focal locking means gaining mastery over our own minds. Just a few powerful but simple techniques will help you undo old habits and make full use of the time your time lock restores to you. Here are two examples:

• Transcending the environment means rising above physical issues that we can’t change. You, for example, could find yourself in an office where the air conditioner is not working. If you focus on the discomfort, you will still be hot and neglect your work. If you can stay cool in the face of the discomfort, given that you cannot change the fact the office is hot, you will at least get your work done.
• Visualizing the ideal means picturing the positive outcomes of staying focused on your work. Sports athletes do this before every game. They visualize themselves making the play and winning the game. Great employees see themselves successful and receiving praise from managers. If you can picture what success looks like, then achieving it becomes easier. The mind follows the imagination, and the physical follows the mental.
   

4. Allocate the time regained. Once you have reclaimed time that used to be stolen by interruptions, you want to use the time wisely and not treat it as superfluous. That means deliberately separating your obligations into those that are the most important (your “critical few”) from all the rest (your “minor many”).

5. Batch processing. Batch processing restores your time by letting you efficiently dispose of repetitive or homogeneous tasks. Carving out a time for batching them saves more time and energy than sprinkling them throughout the day as they come up.

The interruption culture is not inevitable, and it is not harmless. If you can eliminate interruptions with the cooperation of your interrupters, you can improve your performance, your own job and life satisfaction, and that of your fellow employees.