Downshift Your Responsiveness When You Work at Home

Many people today feel pressure to be immediately responsive to every request, no matter when it is received, no matter from whom it is received, and regardless of the method it is delivered. So that you can focus and be more productive in your writing when you work at home, may I respectfully encourage you to downshift your responsiveness in these areas:

1. Answering the door: Just because someone is knocking on your door or ringing your doorbell does not mean you have to answer.
2. Answering the phone: More and more, no matter how many do-not-call lists you are on, your home phone seems to be fair game for surveys, checking on your satisfaction with our service, political calls, and any number of robo-calls. Either let your answering machine pick up, screen the calls and only pick up those from people you know, or just call back those you want to talk with. There’s no need to be like Pavlov’s dog with the sound of a ringing phone.
3. Text messaging: Even though text messages can be incredibly convenient and offer opportunities for real-time problem solving, they can also be major distractors and detractors for productivity.
4. Friend (or connection) requests on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter (or other social media): It’s not urgent; get to it when you get to it.
5. Face-to-face requests from people in your family: Be reasonably responsive to reasonable requests.

That last sentence applies for all of these. Be reasonably responsive to reasonable requests. If someone makes an unreasonable request, well, then I would carefully consider the response to that request.

If you will downshift your responsiveness in the five areas I have listed above, you can upshift your responsiveness and productivity as it relates to writing. And isn’t that what you want?

 

Meggin McIntosh, the PhD of Productivity, is an award-winning professor who now works with academics who prefer overjoyed to overwhelmed. She is a former university professor and administrator and currently a coach, author, and workshop leader. People who are overwhelmed, and would prefer to be overjoyed instead, are the people I’m fortunate enough to connect with.