Business Insight Zone

It’s endemic — and I’m not talking about the nation’s households checking to see what else in on during the commercials for LOST.*

I’m talking about the sometimes herky-jerky rhythms of our daily work, the constant mental channel-flipping between e-mail and IM and spreadsheets and meetings and drop-in visitors and . . . all of it.

It’s an old issue, and indeed I’ve written about it any number of times here. (Case in point.) I also read a good bit about how to combat it, especially at blogs like TimeBack.

But somehow today brought it all home for me. I got a couple of important things done by being systematic. Other things I interrupted by being distractable and unsystematic. But I also recognized a couple of key gaps in my work thanks to several bits of feedback that, taken singly, wouldn’t have amounted to much but, taken together, showed me where I’ve been missing opportunities — not just today or this week, but in the bigger picture.

Taking time to think, to stay on one channel, is a good way to spot those missed opportunities sooner and better. Channel-flipping, while it’s good for many things (diversity of intake, amusement, etc.), isn’t great for that kind of pattern recognition.

You think?

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* Given (a) the furor over tonight’s season premiere, and (b) the extreme confusion I’ve experienced every time I’ve accidentally watched the show, I’m glad I’m not a LOST fanatic. Maybe I’ll rent it on DVD so I can watch it back-to-back when it’s all over.

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Photo by Francis Bijl.

Category: Productivity, The business brain, The working life