How to handle interruptive ideas

- By now, you likely know that I'm a huge fan of having focus, which is vital to staying on the task at hand and not allowing interruptions to get in your way. The more we can minimize interruptions, the more productive you'll be. But what if you're the one doing the interrupting? What if it's not just phone calls or someone knocking on your door, but you're in the middle of an important project and an idea pops into your head, something completely unrelated to the task at hand? Some people are afraid that they're going to lose that idea, so they immediately act on completing that idea, switching away from the project at hand.

The problem with this is you're going to pay a lot of switching cost, lost time, and momentum. You're going to have to stop, transition mentally to whatever this new idea is, complete it, and then transition mentally back to the task you were completing previously. This little interruption could cost you 10 to 20 additional minutes of switching costs if you allow it. I recommend that you be prepared for these kinds of situations. Your tool, have a gathering point on hand at all times.

A gathering point is a place where you send incomplete ideas. For example, Microsoft OneNote is a great place to capture those ideas. Evernote is another commonly used tool. Create a section or notebook folder in your favorite note taking app and call it Inbox. Then, for every unresolved task that comes to mind, add a new note in that section. For example, if I'm in the middle of one project and a task pops into my mind, let's say I need to buy an anniversary gift for my wife.

Rather than stopping the task at hand and buying that gift, I would quickly switch over to OneNote, create a note, and type in quickly, buy anniversary gift for my wife. And then close OneNote. How do I know that I'm going to take action on what I just wrote? Because every week, I have regularly scheduled recurring processing time. I recommend, in my Time Management Fundamentals course, that the average person has about five hours a week of processing.

This is usually enough to get through all of your unprocessed items including notes like this. When that processing time arrives. In my case, let's say it arrives on Friday, I'll see that note and then take action on it at that time. Or if it's going to take longer than 15 minutes, schedule time in my calendar to complete the task. In this way, the ideas that pop into my head have a minimal disruption to my productivity when I'm trying to be focused.

Yet, I know that I'm never going to lose a wonderful, important idea.