The power of going offline to get things done

By davidjmclare

Have you ever had something that just had to be done today? You know it is going to take a solid few hours to complete, but that’s not a problem, there are surely enough hours in the day. But then the day ends, you look at your work and find it to be half complete.

Hopefully this is not a common occurrence, but it certainly isn’t alien to many people. The problem is distraction. Whether it is your boss calling to ask for trivial information or a tidal wave of emails to respond to, you can easily find your day has ended before your real work begins.

There is a simple answer to this. Go offline. By turning off your phone, email and Skype or Lync, you’ll shut off these distractions completely. A 3 hour task now takes no more than 3 hours, in fact you may even find it takes less. Compare that to with distractions where the task may end up taking all day or even not be completed at all.

But to do this you must follow certain etiquette. While it may feel a little rude to tell your colleagues or boss you will be going offline for 3 hours, it is much ruder not to tell them. So first steps, make sure there is nothing going on that may require your attention at a moment’s notice. Tell the people you work with you will be offline and responding later in the day, and then follow through with it.

It is also best to go offline in the morning. This is the best time to get big tasks done and it also means that if anything does come up that is urgent, you won’t be logging back online too late to deal with it, it will likely be midday and that leaves plenty of time to deal with something for the end of the day.

Do you ever go offline to get things done? What is your experience of it? Does it work for you and your colleagues? Let us know on Twitter!

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