Hey all.
I need some advice on how to deal with the adhoc vs planned work.
There are emails, tickets and verbal interruptions that need my attention. Additionally there is an incrr sing amount of meetings I need to attend. At the same time I want to focus on the development of the infrastructure for the planned work. I notice that all the interruptions are detrimental to both the planned and the adhoc work.
The fact that I have to switch my attention all the time and can't just focus starts to frustrate me. It also has to do with my adhd. I cant utilize my hyperfocus to finish the planned work, instead it stimulates the attention switching side of my adhd and cant get into the problem. I just notice I am not as effective as I was before I got this workload.
Do you people recognize this struggle? How do you deal with this?
I guess, a very important skill is to say no. It's ok to be unavailable to finish a task.
A meeting without an agenda, from my experience, lacks focus and consequently often results. Sometimes asynchronous communication is enough... Personally, i try to concentrate meetings to specific days of the week, so that i have two, three days a week without major interruptions.
Regarding operations, i like to cite: "unplanned work is death to all other types of work, such as planned, or projects"
We do have an operation center, which routes events, incidents, information coming from all types of ingress(events, email, calls, incident tickets) to specific support groups.
Support groups, as does mine, have a so called "dispatcher" role. Someone's main task for the week is to acknowledge incoming events, and to try to solve most (small) tasks themselves - to keep everyone's back free; to concentrate unplanned work of the whole group.