Please, Go Away

TO AID PRODUCTIVITY, OFFICE WORKERS ARE TRYING NEW TECHNIQUES TO CURB INTERRUPTIONS

So much to do, so little time. And it doesn't help that the guy down the hall is always dropping by your cubicle to share unsolicited lawn-care tips. Then there are the phone, the e-mail, the micromanaging boss to deal with. On a typical day office workers are interrupted about seven times an hour, which adds up to 56 interruptions a day, 80% of which are considered trivial, according to time-management experts. "We pride ourselves on being multitaskers, but the truth is, we're functioning at a state of partial attention," says John White, international program director with Priority Management, a training...

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