“Mum, I need help!” “Honey, where’s the…?” “Package delivery!” Three hours of planned work time vanished in a blur of interruptions, and I hadn’t even touched my most important task. This is the hidden struggle of women building businesses from home. Your brilliant ideas and ambitious goals are being held hostage by constant distractions—but not anymore. Today, I’m sharing the exact system that transformed my remote work productivity despite the chaos.
In this episode, I’m introducing my revolutionary “Interruptions Protocol” – a practical two-part framework I’ve designed specifically for high-achieving women balancing business growth with caregiving responsibilities. Unlike traditional productivity advice that assumes you can simply shut yourself away for hours, my approach acknowledges the unique challenges women face and provides realistic solutions you can implement immediately.
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In this episode, we cover:
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- Why interruptions are such a significant threat to your remote work productivity
- The unique challenges women face when trying to carve out uninterrupted work time
- A comprehensive framework for minimizing interruptions without extreme measures
- Practical solutions for setting boundaries with family members, neighbors, and technology
- How to track your interruptions to identify patterns and create effective strategies
- Why most productivity advice fails women entrepreneurs with caregiving responsibilities
Are you ready to transform how you manage distractions and reclaim control of your workday? I’d love to have you join my free “Messy Kitchen Workshop Series” – a collection of virtual trainings designed to help you overcome the challenges of scaling your business with limited hours, especially if you’re the primary caregiver with little ones at home. Sign up for these completely free workshops to get my personalized coaching on your specific interruption challenges and ensure distractions aren’t the reason you’re not earning what you deserve in your business.
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Links & Mentioned Resources
Time Masters
[Next episode, Part 2]
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More about The Time & Productivity Podcast for Entrepreneurs
The podcast to help you, as an ambitious high-achieving Type-A woman, master work-life balance as a business owner.
Join Kirsty Knight each week, so she can help you create the level of success you truly desire, in a business that you love, without needing to sacrifice time for yourself, your health, your family, and your enjoyment of life outside of your business. Without hustling, without working yourself into the ground, and without burning out.
Kirsty will be sharing lessons from her own business journey, business strategies, time management and productivity hacks, and the psychology you need to understand – to help you go from overworking and overwhelmed, to mastering your time and productivity, so you can be working less, and earning more.
If you are trying to build or scale your business, but find yourself struggling with overwhelm, self-sabotage, procrastination, distractions, perfectionism, people-pleasing, hustling, overworking and always thinking “there just aren’t enough hours in the day”, this podcast is for you.
You CAN have it all. And she’s going to show you how.
The unedited podcast transcript for this episode of the The Time & Productivity Podcast for Entrepreneurs
Good morning lovelies, so I want to take the next two episodes to talk about managing interruptions. Why do we need to talk about this? Why are they a problem?
Because if you have only a few hours a day to grow your business, to get your work done, to make moves towards your revenue goal, we want to make sure we are using them productively, and one thing that that has the potential to sabotage your productivity – is interruptions.
And if you are trying to grow your business working from home, with little ones around, with your other half around, with relatives or friends nearby, with nosy, overly friendly or demanding neighbours, or with some form of technological connection to the rest of the world – e.g. a phone, email…etc – then interruptions is what you can expect.
So let’s talk about why we have so many interruptions to deal with in the first place…
Because there’s a whole myriad of reasons – ranging from other people being the problem, to you being the problem.
Firstly, because you work from home, at home, if you have an online business, you are accessible. Even if you have a designated area of the house as your office, people can still find you. It’s not the same as you heading out the door and driving to the office – where only your coworkers and boss can really reach you, and know where you are.
So because they know where you are, and they can come to you any time they have an urge to, they choose to. Even your neighbour can see that you are home (if you have a car on your driveway). So that’s one reason.
Another – might be – that because you work online, or at home, your family (maybe not your immediate family – but your in-laws, your parents, your sister) don’t seem to regard it as “proper work” – because they can’t relate to it. They don’t understand it. They think you can just work whenever so make space for interruptions whenever. So they call round more or just whenever suits them, without considering it might not be desirable or helpful for you.
Another might be that you haven’t set boundaries around when you are working, or communicated them if you have, or upheld them consistently before – so they either aren’t being regarded by other people or taken seriously by other people.
The people around you might just be self-focused and not even be thinking about what you might have going on or care, when they call round or interrupt you.
They might not realise there is any problem or issue with them interrupting you, because you’ve never communicated that there is one. So they are just doing what they do – without realising it’s not wanted.
The people around you might actually need something from you in a particular time frame and you planned to work in that time frame and didn’t consider this or solve for it ahead of time – and you are the only one who can give it to them, or are responsible for giving it to them – e.g. a signature on a parcel delivery, or help on your little one’s homework question.
Your phone and email are connecting you to literally every single other person on the planet with your details, usually with no barriers to incoming messages and calls, so if you have notifications on, or sounds on, or it’s within reach and you are checking it – there are unlimited interruptions available to you through them.
And lastly you are trying to get stuff done in a busy world, with a bunch of other people surrounding you, with access to you, who have needs and requirements and who want to connect with you. You are not an island.
So interruptions are to be expected. And some – no matter what you do, are still likely to happen. We don’t have control over how other people think or what their opinions are or how much they care, or what they do.
But hopefully you can see already how poor planning, no boundaries, or poor communication and execution of boundaries makes the interruption problem worse.
Now what typically happens with my clients when they are trying to solve for the interruption problem – when they know that this is one of the reasons they aren’t getting their work done in the hours they want to be getting it done, is they try to solve it by purely avoiding the potential for interruptions.
For example, they think the solution is to get up before the kids wake up and work then. Or they think they need to book a hotel away from the family to have a concentrated weekend of working on their business. Or they need to hire an office away from the home. Or go to a co-working space on the day that they know their peers don’t often go.
This was literally my client last week. A friendly peer kept interrupting her when she was trying to focus at the co-working office. And she started to say that maybe she should pick a day when she knew he had meetings and wouldn’t be able to interrupt her because he was working.
And I had to redirect her to – we don’t want to have to work our schedule around his work. We want to work our schedule around our work, and find a way to stop him interrupting us.
But this isn’t even that bad. I think worse than that is when my clients are waiting to find a big chunk of empty space in their calendar, when they have the house to themselves, to get started on that funnel, or that lead magnet, or that big business project. Or even worse than that, they are waiting til the kids are much older and less demanding, and then they will pick the whole business thing back up – because they can never seem to find a minute to themselves without interruptions.
And I mean, we can do those things – they can work – but do we really want to be getting up at 5am, or waiting till we find the perfect time when the house is completely empty, we have no deliveries, our in-laws are away on holiday, our sister is sick in bed, our neighbours are preoccupied…etc?
No, we don’t.
I think I can speak for all women out there – that we don’t wanna be sacrificing sleep. We don’t want the only way that we can get work done on our business to be if we leave our house and pay for a hotel or pay for an office block somewhere.
So what is a more reasonable solution then?
So I have a two part strategy that I take my clients through. Called The Interruptions Protocol. So I’ll give you an overview of both parts today, and then we will talk about part 1. And then the next episode we will dive into how to implement part 2.
So the first part is about minimising interruptions in the first place. Notice I didn’t say “eliminate” all interruptions. Minimise. Which we can do.
The second part is about mitigating the impact of the interruptions that we do have. Ok – so that means manage the interruptions we do have, in a way that reduces the negative impact they may have.
And I’ll just say, this second part is, I think, the part that’s missing from most of the productivity Guru’s advice out there. And I think that’s because most of the productivity advice in the mainstream media is given by men for men.
The advice is to simply carve out huge chunks of uninterrupted time so you can focus on your business.
They don’t mention how to deal with interruptions you can’t escape from. Because for most men, it seems to be possible to carve out that interruption free time completely. So why would they need to know what to do in the case of a random interruption?
Work solidly from when you wake up to 10 am without interruption. That was literally one piece of advice in a productivity course I took a few years ago.
By contrast, most women do not have the luxury of being able to shut themselves away from the world on a regular basis to get their work done – without being interrupted by their partners, their kids, their kids school, their family members…etc.
And you can see why that might be…Most women will have to get their kids up and dressed and breakfasted before school. Most women do the school pick ups and drop offs. Most women will be marked down as the emergency next of kin contact. Most women will be called up if their kids get sick at school and need to be picked up. Most women are the coordinators, organisers, administrators, purchasers for the household members, the household services, the household chores, the household stuff. Most women are the primary care givers for their children. The carers for their elderly parents. Most women take their kids to the dentist and doctor appointments. Most women trying to build their business whilst their little ones are at home, or their older kids are sick at home, and don’t have someone to offload responsibilities for caring for them, so they have to work with said little ones interrupting. Most women will be their children’s first choice for providing what they feel they need in the moment AND most women find it hard to set firm boundaries, ask for what they want and need, not people-please and honour the boundaries they have set.
Now I am generalising. It’s not ALL women. I’m well aware that in some families, the men take on these roles. But still – most women in the UK – according to various studies are still the primary caregivers – but also I’m speaking for most of my clients – who decided to not go back to corporate after having children – wanted to stay at home to raise their kids – but then started online businesses that they are trying to build around still being the primary caregivers for their children.
So whilst I’m 100% for striving to equal the playing field so women have the ability to carve out huge chunks of guaranteed completely interruption free time – like the men get to – in the mean time, let’s also have a strategy for mitigating the impact of the interruptions we haven’t yet figured out how to eliminate as the primary care giver for our kids, and a business owner too.
So let’s talk about first of all how we can minimise interruptions in the first place without sacrificing sleep,without going to the extreme of having to book a separate office space, or a hotel.
So there are three steps to Minimising.
Step number 1 – is Awareness. To simply observe and gain awareness of the typical interruptions you face on a day-to-day basis. And we want to answer the 4 W’s. Who is interrupting? What is the interruption about? When does it happen? And why does it happen?
And we want to know these answers in order to figure out the strategy for how best to deal with it.
So you could just do a simple interruption tracking exercise over the next few days to figure this out – Simply notice what interruptions come up every time you sit down to work. Who is interrupting you, what for, when and why? And note them down.
Is it your neighbour, asking that you give them a hand with fixing their television?
Is it your mother-in-law popping by because she was just in the area?
Is it your sister phoning because you haven’t spoken in an age?
Is it your husband asking you to make him a cup of tea?
Is it your kids asking you for a snack?
Is it your phone and your messages and your emails pinging and your social media notifications?
Who is interrupting you and what for?
And when are they happening? Is there a particular time of day you tend to get more? Is there a particular day that seems to be more chaotic than usual? Is there any rhyme or reason behind when they occur?
And why? Why do you think they are happening?
Not – what is the request that is being made, we’ve already covered that, but why do they feel they can interrupt you then? Or why are you allowing yourself to be interrupted then?
Without judgement, just curiosity – why do you think it is?
Is it that your family aren’t taking your business seriously?
Is it that you’ve never told them that you’re supposed to be working at this time?
Is it that this is right about the time when your kids get hungry?
Is it that you scheduled a parcel and didn’t tell the parcel man where to put it if you did not answer the door?
Now what will happen just with this step is that you will start to see patterns.
And opportunities.
Opportunities to plan better, to prepare better, to set some boundaries, to better communicate those boundaries, to uphold those boundaries.
Which leads us to step 2.
Which is to Strategise. So we want to ask ourselves – How can we minimise this? How can we prevent it from happening, or reduce the chance of it happening, and reduce the potential impact upfront?
So that might be plan to work at a different time.
But it might also be just communicate to your mother-in-law that you are not available between 10 and 2 each day.
It might be to ask for a different appointment time when you ring up to book the kids into the dentist, when the first one offered is in your typical work window.
It might be to prep some snacks ahead of time and put them out on the counter for your kids when they get in.
It might be to tell your husband or partner that they’ll have to sort themselves out if they want a drink.
It might be to commit to taking your own business seriously – so you can communicate to others the same.
Ok, so what strategies could you implement to reduce the number and type and frequency of the interruptions you usually face?
And then step 3 is to Overcome. Overcome the obstacles, the fear, the awkwardness, the resistance, the challenges you face in actually implementing the strategy. So you can test it out. And of course, once we try anything we always want to be evaluating. To see what worked, what didn’t and what you are going to try next time.
But this step is essential because a strategy in theory is no use unless you actually put it into practice, and usually there is a reason why these interruptions keep happening – that is in part something to do with you.
For example – why haven’t you ever communicated that you aren’t available between those hours to your mother-in-law? If she keeps popping round at that time.
Maybe it’s because it didn’t cross your mind to. But maybe you feel you can’t. Maybe you are worried about what she might think. Or about offending her. Or about there being some sort of conflict in the family, which you hate.
Why haven’t you prepped snacks ahead of time before? Or instructed them to make their own? When you know your kids always interrupt you for one when they get in.
No judgement here. There might be very reasonable explanations.
But where there are limiting beliefs. Beliefs about what is acceptable. Or possible. Or where there are unnecessary obstacles. Obstacles that we can shift. Or fears. Or resistance to feeling a particular emotion – like guilt, or awkwardness…We have to get curious to find these because we will need to do the work to shift them first, with coaching – in order to make the first part – Minimising the Interruptions, possible.
You have to be willing to get past those unhelpful thoughts. Those fears around feeling uncomfortable.
You have to be willing to say the hard thing in some cases to minimise the interruption. And this applies too for mitigating the impact when they still happen. You have to be willing to uphold the boundary you have set – which might feel really uncomfortable.
In fact, it probably will feel really uncomfortable and so you have to be willing to feel that discomfort and say the thing anyway if we are going to solve for these interruptions that keep happening.
We can’t just hope that our family stops popping round randomly. We have to make the ask.
I remember I had to do this with my family a few years back because they live really close and although part of me loved the connection, both my partner and me are self-employed, and we just weren’t getting enough done when you factored in an hour of chatting to my dad.
And it was uncomfortable. And I felt bad. And I think a small part of my dad was offended. And maybe a bit hurt. And that felt awful.
AND I still had to set that boundary. Because at the time I was running a building project and two businesses and I was squeezing meal times and sleep to get it all done – which wasn’t healthy or sustainable. And part of the reason for that was that I wasn’t getting enough done in the day.
Now you can do the hard thing, implement the strategy kindly but firmly.
My client with the co-worker simply told him that she needed to “plug in” for a 90 minute work sprint now, but they could check-in after that.
Nothing rude or terribly hurtful in that statement. And the bloke was totally fine with it.
So she didn’t have to reschedule what days she went to the co-working space. She just had to be aware of what the interruption was, have a plan of what to say, and be willing to feel a bit uncomfortable to say it, and be willing for him to have whatever experience he was going to have as she said it.
We can’t control how they will take our request, or our boundary. And that’s ok. We don’t need to.
We just need to be willing to make the request or set and communicate the boundary and have our own back around why we are doing it.
So that’s the first part my friends. So I encourage you to start a mini-interruption tracking exercise to start identifying the interruptions you could be working to minimise.
Now if you are stumped as to what strategy you could employ to minimise the ones you find, or you don’t know how you could possibly say that uncomfortable thing, or make that request – I would urge you to sign up for my Messy Kitchen Workshop Series.
This is a series of workshops I’m going to be running over the next few months virtually (but in my messy kitchen – because I have a 10 month old and that seems to be my new reality), with various trainings and workshops on all of the challenges and obstacles you will face as you try to scale your business to 6-figures or more, working with limited hours (i.e. if you have little ones at home or in school, and you are the primary care giver and are trying to do both).
So they are completely free to come to, I know I am diving deeper into managing interruptions in one of them, and I am going to be able to coach you on the workshop on your specific circumstances, so this is a perfect opportunity to get help on this, if you want extra support to make sure interruptions is not the reason you aren’t earning what you want to be in your business.
Ok so that is part 1 of the strategy –
To summarise – Part 1 is to Observe, Strategise & then Overcome.
You have to become aware of what interruptions you typically get, who from, when and why, you then want to brainstorm strategies you could use to reduce the number and frequency of interruptions, and then you want to make sure you have overcome the resistance to implementing that strategy – and actually saying or doing the hard thing, making the request or setting the boundary.
I’ll be back to cover Part 2 – mitigating the impact of the interruptions we can’t escape from, in the next episode.
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