Last week, I felt the need to apologize to a girlfriend. She had called me during my work hours and I had made the mistake of picking up the phone. The reason that I apologized was because I was distracted during our entire conversation and I didn’t give her the full attention that she deserved. I had broken one of my top time management “rules”: DON’T PICK UP THE PHONE.
Since I started this site last month, I have been receiving a lot of questions from other work at home moms about how to handle distractions. (It is such a common question that I’m currently working on a “Dismantling Distractions” e-book that I will share about later this year.) Of all the technological distractions, the phone tends to rank near the top. Over the last decade, I have found the following four tips to be especially helpful in regards to minimizing phone distractions as a work at home mom.
1. You must value the time that you spend building your business first. Work time is work time – whether you are working from home or at a corporate office. You have to show those in your circle that you value it as such. If they wouldn’t indiscriminately call you to chat if you were working for someone else, then don’t let them call and interrupt you when you are working at home. Let your friends, family and business associates know when you are available to talk (your “lunch hour”) and don’t chat with them outside of those times except for emergency situations. If you are consistent, then they will grow to respect your boundaries. One thing that I agree with Dr. Phil about is that “you teach people how to treat you”. Let them know that your work time is important.
2. Let your calls go to voicemail. To do this, I recommend having a voicemail with the functionality that allows you to hear messages while they are being left. I let my loved ones know to leave a voicemail on my home phone if I don’t pick up the phone. If they need to get in touch with me regarding something that is time-sensitive, they say so in their message and I pick up the phone. (I do this during focused family time too! Initially, it used to drive my husband crazy that I would just let the phone ring when we were having dinner or family time. However, he saw that it made the kids feel special that I valued and protected our family time together so much that I would only interrupt it for emergencies. My husband now does the same thing!)
3. Schedule time for your business phone calls. Of course you will need to talk on the phone for business reasons. Just decide beforehand when that time will be. I like to “bunch” things together, so I try to schedule all (or most) of my calls during certain blocks of time. I primarily use email to schedule calls. However, if scheduling calls is a large part of your business, then you might want to automate setting up calls by using an appointment scheduling tool like TimeTrade. (They have a free personal version and professional versions that start at $49 per year.)
4. Pick up the phone to say, “Call me later.” You can also pick up the phone and simply instruct the caller to call you back at a more convenient time. This doesn’t work for me personally, because it is hard for me to get off the phone once I’m on it. It also breaks my concentration. We are all different though, so this might be a viable option for you.
“Turn off the technology” would normally be a tip that I would give when it comes to digital distractions…but not with the phone. That is because there are certain unexpected calls that we moms always want to pick up. For me that includes calls from my husband, parents or whoever is caring for my kids at the time. I always want those people to have direct access to me, so voicemail isn’t sufficient.
The phone can be a wonderful way to connect. However, as work at home moms we have to be careful that we don’t allow it to steal quality time from neither our businesses nor our families. I hope that these tips are beneficial. If you have any other phone taming advice that has been helpful to you, please share them in the “Comments” section below. Let’s learn from each other!
{Post image built upon plenty.r.’s Flickr photo.}
