There’s a telltale sign that you’ve graduated to the class of Critically Important Person at your company, and that’s how long it takes you to get from your desk to the coffee maker and back. Extracting yourself from the safe haven of your personal workspace opens you up to a potential barrage of oh-hey-quick-question distractions.

Hey, do you have two minutes so I can bounce an idea off you?
Yeah, sure thing.

Can I get your eyes on this scope before it goes out the door?
Alright.

I’d love your opinion on these image selects if you have a sec.
Urgh… okay.

We dressed up our corgi like a pirate for Halloween. Want to see pictures?
Well…I mean… yes.

Eight and a half hallway conversations later, you’ve lost an hour of your workday and your coffee is room temperature. 

Congratulations on being a vital stakeholder in your organization! Your reward is an office full of leeches respected colleagues vying for your attention and energy. 

My best trick to abate that majority of time sucks is an adaptation of something my grade school teachers used to call Ketchup and Mustard Periods. The core principle of a KMP is that you dedicate a regular window of time to the minutiae that can bog down a productive work day. A chance to catch up on the little things in one concentrated block. Catch up. Ketchup. I don’t really get the mustard part if we’re being honest.

There is plenty of flexibility in exactly when and how you implement this tactic, but it’s surprisingly easy to cross five-minute tasks off your to-do list when you stack them end-to-end and relegate them to a fixed period. Once this approach becomes rhythm, you can find yourself developing a tactical, elevated productivity wherein your brain becomes a little bit wired to view these micro-action items as opportunities for tiny dopamine hits.

KMP’s can be applied to email management too. Instead of trying to stay on top of every incoming message as it hits your inbox, set aside an administrative hour each day to respond to the quick hits that demand slices of your concentration. The routine of a designated email purge period can make the process a little less arduous, and a lot less distracting to your other workload. 

And to abate those hallways conversations and drop-bys that interrupt your workflow, extend this principle to live demands as well. “I’d be happy to give you my thoughts on that project plan--just drop by my desk somewhere between 2:00 - 3:00 this afternoon.” Think of it as office hours, but you get to stand in for the disinterested TA that is somehow younger than you.

One of the tricks to employing a KMP is communicating it and abiding by it. Consider marking your calendar publicly, adding a Zoom status message, or even just printing a small placard for your desk or office. You’ll need to commit to that time period consistently, both for the mental trick to take hold, and to demonstrate to your coworkers that you aren’t just avoiding their requests.

As with so many things in this fully-connected, highly-digitized, another-plattituded, business culture, it’s a game of managing your own distractions. Will Ketchup and Mustard be your solution? Mayo! You’ll certainly relish the opportunity for fewer disruptions. Sauerkraut.

Ok thanks, I’ll see myself out now.