What's distracting you?
On 27th July 2012, the UK and most of the world stood still to watch the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics. Throughout the day, the build up to the spectacle, named “Isles of Wonder” was the focus of the media. There were stories about the Academy Winning director Danny Boyle, sneak previews of some of the acts and the stories behind them.
It was the perfect distraction the Department for Education needed, to announce a controversial change to UK education legislation. In its announcement, described as ‘minor changes’ to the funding agreement with academies, Headteachers in academy schools were given the freedom to recruit staff without the formal teaching qualification QTS. This represented a fundamental shift within the education arena in the UK. It was picked up by the Guardian and the BBC, and ignored or missed completely by the other national media outlets, which I suspect was exactly their intention.
Distraction is a state. Things that distract, divide our attention or prevent our concentration. The word itself has its roots in latin – ‘distractus’ meaning to draw apart. We humans have been suffering distraction for centuries, the word itself dating back to 1350-1400 in Middle England.
In a business environment distraction is what happens when we allow our attention to be divided from the difficult challenges, in favour of things that are more attractive, easier to achieve or more enjoyable. When our attention is divided across many things, we can often become distracted from the really important things.
Distraction causes loss of productivity. Productivity requires us to focus on things for a period of time, to start and finish them. When we are distracted by questions, emails, LinkedIn, phone calls or other interruptions, we can’t possibly be as productive as we would if were focussed on one thing for a longer period of time.
Most people can think of an example of task they’d rather not tackle, and how they ‘allow’ themselves to be distracted. From the teenager who would rather surf the web than do their history homework, to the executive who finds themselves tidying their desk rather than writing that report, to the sales person who finds distraction in working LinkedIn rather than picking up the phone.
Many business owners are allowing themselves to be distracted from their software. They know in their heart of hearts their back office systems are no longer supporting the business, however the new website, the latest product launch or the new sales director are much better distractions than investigating software.
If we could put a figure on the cost of distraction, it would cause us to take action. From data I’ve collected a conservative estimate of a 5% productivity loss in a 25 employee product based business is a £54,000 per annum distraction.
What’s the task that you need to take action on today?
Read my whitepaper on how to overcome distraction when you realise you need new software