I wrote about the “Push vs Pull” concept last week while answering a reader question for “Ask Logan Lenz.”
I thought it would be helpful to others dealing with time management on a day to day basis.
Reader question:
It’s impossible for me to stay on task at my job. As a manager, my team comes into my office constantly to ask me about their situations. How can I better manage daily distractions at the office?
My Response:
While it’s true that you will never be able to completely resist against the real-time need for others that require your higher level of expertise, there are a few best practices that help to minimize the way these occurrences take place. The trick is to build the right protocols that leave your team with options to seek your attention ON YOUR TERMS.
Here’s what I mean:
- Define the difference between “push vs pull” in the work you do. Push should be defined as tasks you aspire to do on your own time. Pull is when others come to you, without warning, and require your assistance.
- Because pull work is unplanned, the trick is to provide your team with the best method of communication to you, based on a sliding scale. If you don’t determine, what’s important to have you involved, this constant pull work can hijack your day.
- Build processes and reference guides that build more autonomy over time. Are you REALLY needed by the team? In most cases, you’ll come to learn that your team is simply afraid they’ll do the wrong thing. In others, they’re coming to you so you’ll see they are smart or proactive. Empower them with your knowledge so that you can free up more time for your more important push work.
- Define times of the day (or days of the week if you have more time to make decisions) that welcome pulls. Yes, you may end up getting flooded with requests during this time, but that’s when you’ll want to schedule meetings with your team so that you can solve all of their problems in one fell swoop.
- Always be available, but never be available. Keep your door open, but ask an approaching team member how urgent something is. Using your aforementioned sliding scale, you can either postpone the conversation or quickly nudge them toward where they can find the best solution.
Regardless of all of these tricks, I’ve found that this is mostly a losing battle. But at the very least, you can establish the proper rules and processes that will afford you more time to do the work that you want and need to do (push).
Good luck!