Ever notice all the distractions that take place in your office? If you are like most entrepreneurs, there is no doubt that you live it day in and day out. The phones ringing, e-mails coming in, cell phones going off, text messages being received, co-workers needing help – you name it, it happens! Problem is, all those distractions wreak havoc on employee productivity. But there is a way to get it under control, and it’s the library approach!

Quiet Please
If you think about it, the library is one of the best places for getting things done. There are no ringing cell phones, distractions are minimized, and being quiet is encouraged. So all you need to do is replicate this in your office, and you will see your productivity skyrocket! By implementing the library approach in your office, you will be making it a point to minimize distractions and allow people to work on their most important tasks at hand.

Here is how you put the library approach into effect in your office:

1. Designate a one hour window in your office each morning that will be called the “library hours.” You may want to do this from 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m (that’s when we do it at my office). The time period you choose doesn’t matter as much as just consistently having people follow it.

2. Let all your employees know about the library hours and what is off limits. During this one hour period, there should be no phone calls made or accepted from outside, no appointments scheduled, no cell phones ringing, no checking of e-mail, etc. There should also be no talking, so this means that co-workers can not go bug other co-workers for help or to ask questions.

3. During library hours, all PDAs and cell phones should be shut off and the office should be totally quiet. All incoming calls can be sent to voicemail and calls can be returned later, once library hour is over. The important thing here is that all employees need to understand, and adhere to, the idea that there needs to be no noise or distractions.

4. For the duration of the library hour each day, every employee should be busy working on their most important task or project. This will give them one unabated hour per day of to work on it.

5. Repeat the library hour each day of every week, so it becomes habit and everyone comes to appreciate it. They may find it odd at first. Scratch that. They WILL find it odd at first, but once they see how nice it is to meet deadlines and get their work done uninterrupted, they will thank you for it!

Increasing Productivity
Without a doubt, one of the biggest boons to your office productivity are all those productivity tools. Yet, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. And all these tools will ultimately overwhelm you and your employees. So by just eliminating all those distractions for one hour per day, you will be adding 5 hours of dedicated productivity time to your office each week. Just imagine, all your employees times 250 hours of quality productivity each year!

You may be thinking at this point that there is no way it would work for your office. You may think that you have to get calls made and answered or e-mails can’t wait. While your fears are noted, they are likely unfounded! They are merely that, fears. I urge you to put the library hour approach into action, even trying it out in your office for a month to see how it goes. I bet you find that you accomplish more throughout the day and virtually eliminate the need to put in extra hours.

Oh, and if you are really struggling in enforcing this new policy. Just hire a librarian to work at your office for an hour each day. She will “shush” everyone into adherence.