NOTE: This blog entry is meant to be the start of an article I want to write....so I deeply apologize if there is not as much entertainment value as you have grown accustomed to.
Why is it so difficult to timeblock your day when you are in a support position?
For me, a typical day often looks like this: I arrive at work with one thing on my mind. This ONE THING is something I will get done today, if I do nothing else. I will tackle this thing first. Just as soon as I check my email for anything really urgent. I dive into my email, just to assess the things that really need to be done, and the next thing I know an hour has passed. The phone rings - it's a client who has a session this morning, so I really need to take the call. Then I listen to my voicemail, and realize there is someone I really need to call back - and if I don't reach them this morning, they will be out on vacation. I get their voicemail. The phone rings - it's a client and I'm not sure why they're calling, but I take the call so I won't have to play phone tag. While I'm on the phone with them, I miss a call and have another voicemail to return. I check my email again - 8 new messages have popped up. I start to tackle those messages when I realize I have a meeting in 10 minutes and I have not prepared. I scramble to get a few things together - the phone rings - and I make it to my meeting only a few minutes late.
After the meeting, I realize I only have an hour and a half before my lunch break, so I resolve to do the ONE THING right now. Just as soon as I listen to the three voicemails that came in during my meeting. As I'm about to return a call, the phone rings and it's the person I called earlier this morning - gotta take that call. As I hang up, I see an email pop up on my screen that I've been waiting for, so I handle that situation next. Then I notice an email that I really need to answer, as a client has been waiting for my response. The phone rings - I pick it up without thinking and realize it's my mom. I spend five minutes trying to get her off the phone while I answer email at the same time. I hang up and suddenly realize I'm 10 minutes late for my lunch break. I grab my workout bag and head to the gym.
After a frantic workout, I eat lunch at my desk while I catch up on a few emails. 30 minutes later I have more email in my in-box than when I started. I decide to push email aside and work on my ONE THING. The phone rings - it's someone who is very hard to get a hold of, and I take the call. This leads to an hour-long crisis mode as I try to solve the problem that came up in my conversation with them. Just as I am finishing up with this, one of our salespeople stops by my desk to talk about a client who needs to be scheduled. I promise I will take care of that right away, and so I set aside the ONE THING and call this client. 30 minutes later I have resolved that situation, but then I realize that I have only 5 minutes to prepare for my weekly afternoon meeting with one of my Coaches. I scramble to get ready and am relieved when he is 5 minutes late getting off the phone. We have a quick meeting, and then as we wrap up I realize I have only 30 minutes left in the day to get my ONE THING done. The phone rings. My email flashes at me on the screen. The day is over, and the ONE THING I was going to do today......did not get done. I decide that tomorrow, definitely, I will do the ONE THING.
When you work in a customer service/support type of role, it's mandatory that you handle things as they come up. If you constantly put off helping your clients until it was most convenient for you, they would not feel they are getting good service. It's the nature of the beast - there is no way to entirely avoid interruptions and being in a reactive mode.
However, I believe you can minimize interruptions to help yourself stay on task by adhering to a flexible timeblock and by using "white space" in your day.
STEP ONE: Bookend Your Day
Everyone has a typical (if not fixed) start and end time to their day. Maybe this fluctuates depending on the day of the week, but it is set. Place boundaries around this time on your calendar, to remind yourself that this is the workday that you have to work with. You might put your commuting time on your calendar before and after your workday. OR, schedule the first and last 30 minutes of your day as something along the lines of "Prep Time," "Email Follow-up" or "Daily Review." This serves as a reminder that with most days you will need time for departure and re-entry into the flow of your work, so you avoid finding yourself walking out of a meeting with just five minutes to wrap up for the day.
STEP TWO: Schedule the "Fixed Points"
There are always going to be a few "fixed points" in your day or your week. A regular staff or department meeting, a one-on-one meeting, a recurring deadline for submitting reports - all of these things need to happen for you to be able to effectively do your job. Typically they will happen at the same time every day or every week. Schedule these into your calendar next.
STEP THREE: Schedule Prep Time
To extract or provide the greatest value from these fixed points, you are also going to need to allow time to prepare. Whether this is the 30 minutes right before a scheduled meeting, or an hour early in the morning to ensure you don't miss a key deadline, you should plan ahead with some time to prepare. There may be some days when you really only need 10 minutes to get ready for the meeting, or when you're finished with your reports in 1/2 hour, but if you don't schedule out the maximum time you need then you'll find yourself scrambling. Schedule this time on your calendar - but understand that this time will be flexible. It can be moved earlier or later, as long as it still happens.
STEP FOUR: Evaluate White Space
When you spend the bulk of your day operating in reactive mode, you can't schedule out time to receive emails and phone calls, because it's impossible to predict when those calls might come in. However, you can schedule the important things (Steps 1-3) and then utilize the "white space" in between to react to the needs of your clients or co-workers.
For example, you may opt not to take an incoming phone call during your prep time for an important weekly meeting. You need to focus on the task at hand, so you let that call go to voicemail. Once you are done with your meeting, you can return to your desk with white space ahead of you, and return that phone call. Your meeting will have been more productive, and even though the client missed you initially, they will appreciate your quick response.
IDEAS TO CONSIDER:
*Time tracking to identify the times when incoming call volume is the greatest - this should be white space time because you know you will be interrupted
*Time tracking to identify times when you have the best chance of reaching people - or even the quickest return call time. This would be good time to be making outbound calls.
*With both of these times identified you can also figure out when the slow times are - this is good project time.
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