Hello, hello, hello! And welcome to today’s show on Creative Business Success. Today we’re talking about how to have no interruptions. Imagine that. Zero interruptions to your work life. Wow! Yes, it can be done. You can certainly reduce them anyway.

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So, hi there! I’m Una Doyle. I’m the founder of CreativeFlow.tv where you find actionable insights, strategies, and tips to help you to grow your creative business. I help you to make the transformation into a happy, healthy, and wealthy creative entrepreneur.

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Alright, so today we are talking about how can you get to a place where you can have no interruptions. And thank you for likes. Keep those coming! So the thing is that you’ve got to look first of all, at why is it important that you don’t have interruptions - apart from the fact that they can be annoying. So sometimes you have those annoying people who interrupt you all the time. You obviously want to get away from that. And so I would show you how to deal with those people, those people who might be annoying and how you can really increase your productivity. Because the fact is that whenever you are interrupted, it actually takes you 50% longer to complete your task than it would have done if you weren’t interrupted. 50% longer plus worse than that people who are interrupted are up to 50% more likely to make more errors. This is a massive drain on your productivity. And it can be frustrating as well if you’re trying to be immersed into this creative soup where you can be coming up with ideas and strategies and doing whatever kind of creative work it is that you do. And for that, people like you and me, we need uninterrupted time. We need to be able to fully immerse ourselves into that in order to be able to achieve creative flow and really get into that space where we can do work we can be really proud of. I know that is what you probably want because most creatives say to me that they want it too. We all want work we can be proud of. So, this is really important for that reason.

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The other thing is when you are interrupted unnecessarily, it’s a sheer waste of time. And time is not a renewable resource. You’re not able to replace time. Every second, every minute, every hour that you waste you do not get back. And so interruptions can be a massive waste of your time as well.

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One of the reasons why this happens - well there are three big reasons, right? Number one - and I think this is one of the bigger ones, is because a lot of people understand some of the other things. There is this big mindset and it’s about a lack of boundaries. Now, sometimes, quite often I’m working with people and they work from home. So, ideally they have their own office but maybe they’re just only getting started and they are working from the kitchen table. And the thing is when a neighbor or friend pops around and interrupts you because they’re like, “Oh you’re at home all the time now.” It’s like you need to be able to set those boundaries so that that doesn’t happen. You know, that could suck hours out of your day and certainly your week if that’s happening several times. It’s also the case that often when people start working for themselves it can be easy for family and friends to think that you’re always available. So you have to be able to set those boundaries when you are and aren’t available. Just as you would if you were employed by somebody. Those boundaries are really, really important.​

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Now the second biggie is poor delegation. I’ll probably need to do a show just on delegation alone or in fact even just some aspects of delegation alone.​ Please pop it in the comments if you want me to do that. Because I know this can be a challenge for a lot of creative business owners. Let me talk about why this is. So there are those of us who aren’t more creatively minded naturally in terms of coming up with innovation. We can all be creative in different ways but in terms like, “This is what your job is supposed to be.” We tend to be very heady in the clouds. We tend to be very big future thinkers. We don’t tend to think in detail so much. And we also move really fast. While you’re putting notes in, I tend to talk very fast. And so that speed, quite often, to the people who you’re delegating to - it’s just too fast for them. And so, to be able to slow down and get into detail enough is really, really important. Now we’ll talk about that in a few moments. Please stay tuned for that.

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​The other reason why people can have a lot more interruptions than they need to is because they don’t have enough planning and structure in the way that they’re running their business and even their life. So these are the three key reasons: lack of boundaries, poor delegation, and lack of structure and planning.

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So what do you do about that? I’ve got a whole list of things and we should take at least one of these and implement it in the next week. And let me know in the comments which one you’re going to do. Because some of them are specific actions and some of them are more mindset related.​

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The first thing is to delegate effectively. if you are in a position where you have got a team or even if you’re just delegating to suppliers like virtual assistants or freelancers and whatever it might be, then make sure that you’re doing that effectively. Remember, you have to slow down, way slower than you think. And it might even feel painful the first few times that you do this but it’s necessary. You have to understand that everybody does not think like you. You might look at a situation and boom you’ve got it, you understand. And then, you convey that to somebody else and you’re confused​ as to why they can’t pick it up. Look at it this way, it’s like you’re in outer space looking at the whole planet and you can see everything and how it all fits together. But they don’t even see the forest, they’re like in the woods, in the forest and they literally only see the trees that are around them. So that’s the varying difference in perspective that you can have. So it’s really important to be able to slow down. And that will then allow you to speed up. You definitely need to be doing that.

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The other thing is actually to also evaluate the interruptions because sometimes an interruption might be an opportunity. It might be an opportunity for you to connect with a loved one. It might be an opportunity that you wouldn’t have seen if you were​ too busy, busy, busy. So do take the opportunity to evaluate them. What are the kinds of interruption that I tend to get? And therefore, where am I going to get the most traction in dealing with these. If you find you are getting interrupted say by family members, or by children, or even by friends, well what can you do to build structure into your time to give them the time that you want to give them but in a way that isn’t going to be affecting your work so much yet helps to build up the emotional bank account for your loved ones.

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This next one is more of a mindset one and it’s really about how you value your time. This is so important. Your time is so precious. And if you don’t value your time, nobody else is going to value your time. You have to draw that line in the sand. This might be an opportunity for you to ask yourself, “Well actually, what am I doing that I ought not to be doing? Do I need to switch strategies to something that has been more in flow? Do I need to delegate something even though I think, oh I can’t quite afford it yet?” Is that actually going to free you up so then you are able to move forward much more quickly?​ These are some of the things I want you to look at.

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Now, you have to value your time which brings me up to the next point – and that is you have to get to be okay with saying no. Say no or say not right now without feeling guilty. Because if you say no or not right now and you feel guilty, you might as well have the interruption because there’s no way you’re going to be in creative flow if you’re feeling guilty about something. So, you’ve got to learn to say no and be okay with that. And this is where you’re going to be really tapped into the purpose of your business, and your goals, and what it is that you’re really looking to achieve, and do what you need to do to remind yourself of that. So that you can really, truly prioritize what is important and when you ought to be doing different things.​

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The other thing is about looking at the people who are interrupting you. They could be family and friends. They could be staff members. They could be a business partner. And just really identify who are the people who are energy vampires and time vampires. Because some people will interrupt and like really suck all the life force out of you. Other people are just interruptions for a time.​ Identifying those people and taking the steps towards putting some boundaries in place is what I’m going to come to next as well. This will really help you to, because a lot of the time, it might only be one or two people that are causing the majority of the interruptions. Remember the 80-20 rule. Quite often it’s dealing with 20% of an issue that actually gets you 80% of the results.

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​And then finally, it’s about planning and structuring your time and your tasks in such a way that you are really clear on what you’re doing. If you start every day and you know, “Okay my top one, two, or three things that I must achieve today is this or that.” And when you are clear and focused on that, then it’s much easier for you to be able to bat off those interruptions and be more definite in the way that you’re dealing with things so that you are carving out that time that you need to do the really high-quality, deep work. And it’s the same in terms of when you structure for your own personal time as when you structure your time for certain other you need to do. Maybe, you have a time where you’re available for your staff or you have a regular meeting with a particular supplier or freelancer. So that they know they can gather up all their questions until that time. And they don’t have to be constantly interrupting you in between.

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Part of this as well is about how you tap ​into the tools that you’re using like email, or Slack, or Trello, or whatever it is that you use to help manage your projects and communications with your clients and with your team. You want to be looking at those things for the best effect and make sure that you are not interrupting yourself with them in the meantime.

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So, you’ve got delegation, evaluating your interruptions, valuing your time as if it was a precious jewel, saying no or not right now without feeling guilty, identifying those energy and time vampires and eliminating or reducing the time that they​ have access to you, and making sure you're planning and structuring your time and your tasks as well. Now if you do all of that, I guarantee you, you will reduce the amount of interruptions that you’re getting and who knows, you might even get to have no interruptions at least on certain days of the week or for specific times that you set those boundaries around times that you mark as precious for you. And when you do that, oh my God, the freedom that that gives you I know it might seem kind of counter-intuitive - you’re putting these boundaries and structures in place but actually, all of that does set you free to be able to really focus and to do that creative work that you want to be doing and be really proud of.

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If any of these seems a bit challenging or you want some more information on how to do that or something else that’s going to help you with your creative business success, then, please feel free to give me a shout. Right now I’m offering a small number of free introductory calls with me.​ I’ll pop the link in the comments so you can just book directly into my diary. In fact you’ll even see that I only have certain times in the week that I would make these calls available. So that’s part of how I structure my time and I’m putting this into place. So, great, I’ll forward to it! I know some people just joined in. Apologies, we’re wrapping up. If you come back, all of this will be live in a moment on the page and you can watch it from the beginning. Because it's such a valuable thing to be free of interruptions! I look forward to speak with you all again very soon. Okay, have a fantastic week everybody! I’ll see you here same time next week, that's 4:30 GMT every Wednesday afternoon, 11:30 AM EST, talking all about creative business success. So have a fantastic week. See you same time next week. Bye!