Issue link: https://resources.greenskycredit.com/i/915078
7 The Modern Branding Playbook 2 Prioritization Best Practices We live in a world where distractions are killing our productivity and sucking away our time. One way to save your valuable and precious time is to learn how to remove distractions. Distractions hurt us in many ways more than just stopping us from doing what we need to do – they make us lose focus and concentration. It takes 10 to 25 minutes to get back into our productivity zone again once distracted. What's the solution? Here are a few suggestions: Put your cell phone in another room or turn it off (I personally need to have it in another room or I am tempted to check it every 5 minutes). Do whatever you can to get your phone out of your view and reach. I know you are afraid to go without your smartphone. What do I do? I go into settings and forward my calls to my office. My staff answers calls or it goes to voice mail. Give staff, colleagues, clients and friends the message that you can only be inter- rupted in the case of a "real" emergency. Remove distracting sounds. Sounds break up your flow and concentration. No surprise, this is a natural response to danger. What can you do? Try noise cancelling headphones or ear plugs. For some people it requires moving to another room and closing the door or even going to an- other building. "Open door policies" are fine, but they must till limited. Have open door hours or days instead of an all day long every day open door policy. Do whatever you can to create your own distraction proof environment. Turn off all message notifications from social media, texts and email. This is hard to do; we want to be connected but these messages distract and even if you can avoid looking, you know you really want to. Your scheduled time/blocked time should be sacred and this means email and other digital messages should not distract you. Emails and texts can wait an hour, two hours or even days. Train clients, staff, friends, family, consultants and other contacts that email is not on demand. They should never expect an immediate email response, and I mean never. If it is important, they must call you. Remember, you control your own time and you prioritize what is important. Focus Emails and texts can wait an hour, two hours or even days.