How Multiple Reminders Kill Your Productivity (And Drive You Crazy)

How multiple reminders kill your productivity (and drive you crazy) This is not your ordinary career site. I help the corporate worker who toils away in the company cubicle make career transitions. You want to do your job well, following all the rules -- . The career transitions where I can help you center on three critical career areas: How to land a job, succeed in a job, and build employment security. Top 10 Posts on Categories My consulting work has changed â€" a new project. Along with the new project comes back-to-back-to-back meetings. Plus all of the normal personal stuff. With it comes what I had ignored: the multiple time and device reminders that come along with one’s commitments. For the most part â€" save the one that effectively reminds you of something exactly when you need it â€" reminders suck. Classic, of course, are the 15-minute default reminders in Outlook before every single meeting. With the default second reminder at five minutes before the meeting. With the default THIRD reminder at zero hours before the meeting. I have no control over the default reminders except when it is MY meeting invite going out. So I can have all of my meetings have a five-minute reminder, but the vast majority of my meetings are not mine to run. A lot of my meetings are only a half hour long â€" good meetings should be that long. So I get reminded of my next meeting halfway through the one I’m in. Then another when I’m trying to wrap up and make sure all the next actions are assigned from the meeting I’m in. Then there are all of the personal reminders. To get a haircut, I have a personal calendar appointment with its associated reminder â€" in my case, two hours out so I can look at the end of my workday and make sure I leave on time. But then the salon sends me a reminder like three days before the event. In email. Then they start texting me on my phone. Somewhere, on some device, I need to acknowledge the fact that I have a hair appointment. This is much better then having them call me as well, but how many different devices and venues do I need to have reminders in when I have it on my calendar in the first place? My doctor’s office calls me three times over several days to remind me to get my normal tests. When I don’t answer the phone, they end up sending me a letter. My dentist does the same thing. A reminder about the cost of reminders A whine, right? The majority of the non-self-instigated interruptions come from electronic “notifications” (either email, IM or phone messages); the remainder are person-to-person or face-to-face in nature.   While in-person interruptions are in the minority, they tend to last longer and leave employees with a larger interruption-related workload (as in, the department chief dropping off a pile of expense reports to be completed). And, unfortunately, we never procrastinate when it would do us good, as73% of interruptions are generally handled immediately  â€" whether they need to be or not.   Workers seem to get distracted by the interruptions and tend to finish the task created by the interruption, rather than continuing on point with what they were doing in the first place. Between the reminders and the other interruptions during the work day, it’s remarkable any of us get anything done. The reminder solution? I don’t have any, save reducing the number and venues (in boxes) where you receive the reminders. It’s a pain. The only good tip I’ve discovered is to take that initial Outlook 15-minute reminder and change the second reminder to “0 hours” before the meeting starts. It reduces the interruption from reminders by one. Which means, over the course of the day, a reduction of 6-8 reminders requiring you to acknowledge them and then switch back to what you were working on in the first place. Not great. But a start. Share your thoughts on reminders on your favorite social media outlet. Click on one below. This is not your ordinary career site. I help the corporate worker who toils away in the company cubicle make career transitions. You want to do your job well, following all the rules â€" . The career transitions where I can help you center on three critical career areas: How to land a job, succeed in a job, and build employment security. policies The content on this website is my opinion and will probably not reflect the views of my various employers. Apple, the Apple logo, iPad, Apple Watch and iPhone are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. I’m a big fan.