The Devil is in the distraction
Read on for Executive PA Magazine’s survival guide for the PA in a culture of constant interruptions BY MAGGIE VIDEAN
Have you ever noticed how much more work you get done when doing the odd day working from home? It’s likely that in the home environment there are fewer distractions to eat up your valuable time. An ‘Interruption Culture’ is the norm for most PAs; you get distracted, delayed or deployed on a regular basis, taking your main focus off the task at hand whether in a large organisation, a small office or working in a home environment. Managing the extent and breadth of interruptions can prove to be counter-productive and extremely frustrating, ultimately leading to heightened levels of stress. First, let us sort interruptions into two genres. There
are those that occur unprovoked from an external source and then there are those interruptions that are internally driven or self-generated.
Externally provoked distractions: ■ Your manager ■ Answering to several managers ■ Phone(s) – theirs, his, hers, yours, those around you ■ Email(s) – theirs, his, hers, yours, levels of urgency, spam, etc.
■ People with needs ranging from urgent requests to irrelevant chatter
■ Technology issues ■ Crises and on-the-job emergencies ■ People’s priorities ■ Meetings
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Self-generated interruptions: ■ Online social media ■ Personal phone calls and emails ■ Frequent breaks ■ Home issues, intensified during school holidays ■ Ineffectual time management ■ Inability to say ‘no’
The bad news is that with the advent of social media,
the genre of interruptions is only going to get more per- vasive and invasive. But it is possible to spring clean old habits and develop new ones when it comes to managing an interruption culture.
Audit your role – stop, revive, survive! For the most part, it can be argued that being the ‘gatekeeper’ for your manager would incur an amount of disruption as you protect your manager’s scheduled activities and their personal space. A certain level of interruption is to be expected in the
role of a PA as part of supporting a manager. One PA within a large manufacturing company commented that “being able to deal with countless interruptions” was identified in her job description when she applied for her current role and that she “hasn’t been disappointed”. Therefore, if it is not candidly stated, it is implicit in the fine print of the PA job description, with words such as ‘flexibility’, ‘ability to multi task’ and ‘manage priori-
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