Reflection on a Monday Morning Interruption
It was Monday morning. I had high hopes for a productive day. The calendar was clear. I had relaxed all weekend so my mind was good in spirits. I had eaten a power breakfast of scrambled eggs. I had even checked over my calendar for the week before hand as the experts recommend and made a priority list. I got there early. In the world of productivity blogs on this day I was an A+ student. There I sat in the flow of typing, deep in concentration when my collegue appeared in the doorway asking if he could check my printer as our IT Department needed a report. Followed by the perfectly reasonable question of how my weekend was which at that moment felt excruciating to answer. My jaw tightened and my shoulders grew tighter as I watched my focus being pulled away like a child’s toy dropped in the ocean. To top it off my printer was accidently sent to the French langauge which my colleague jovially asked if I did on purpose because he knows I am trying to learn the language. I said that just happened one day and I couldn’t fix it. It was a funny moment, but I was angry and deflated and couldn’t laugh.The statistics about work interruptions appeared in my head, such as how it can take a half hour to get back on track and that people who are interruppted at work feel more exhausted. I finally just snapped. “Can I fix it and you can come back later?” Immediatly I felt remorse. I really like my co-worker. We are friends. He would do anything for me. The reality is we work in a crazy environment. My ofifce is in the building of an attraction dedicated to trolleys. So we always have visitors roaming the halls, volunteers randomly show up and often there are mini-crisis we need to deal with. I also work with artists so I often have unnannounced visitors. And because all of my collegues and I are close we do not necessarily respect closed doors. In some ways I have created this culture and I struggle with wanting to have an warm, inviting door so to speak. although I have tried to address it at times, habits die hard.
There are people more well versed on the subject of managing interupptions, and I should probably revisit their writings. But what I have found myself interested in lately is tools for embracing the interupptions when they come. Even if follow the life hack tips religiously, living in the world means we will be interrupted. Not just at work, but at home and in our personal lives. How do we begin to view the interruption beyond its one dimensionsal view? To feel and acknowledge the frustration, but to also trust that we will get back and complete the task. To challenge ourselves to be present with the interruption, and see it as a human moment. To acknowledge the reality that we sometimes are the interupter impiningon someone else’s focus.
This is not easy work. It demands a lot of pausing and breathing, which in theory should be easy but often get lost in our immediate limbic reaction to the obstacles in front of us. Maybe this is why people feel more exhausted and it takes so long to get back on track because we are caught in a web of anger, frusturation and worry with cortisol pumping through our veins and our muscles tightening. Perhaps we need to create more rituals to help us embrace the moment and then return to the task at hand. Mantras or a gesture can help refocus our minds. We can smile, laugh. We can remind ourselves that mundane banter is also an important part of the day; it connects us to our colleagues and others. Maybe we take the interruption and make it part of a larger break to get a drink or walk outside and come back to the task fresh. That isn’t to say we shouldn’t try to minimize interruptions if we can, but we should also bring less heavy and negative energy towards them. We don’t need to add more to it.The interruption is not separate from life, it is life.
