Try integrating all your communications together to answer them effectively and enjoy fewer interruptions.
Sometimes it seems that I'm drowning in communications. At any given moment, I could be contacted by phone, voice mail, cell phone, cell voice mail, fax, email, instant message and a knock on the door. The communications age has NOT made my job easier when I'm constantly sidetracked by so many different possibilities. One easy approach to this is trying to combine all your communications together. Yes, Virginia, it can be done.
Email vs. Fax
Text mediums are easiest to convert ... the number of email-to-fax and fax-to-email converters out there is simply astounding. From online services that translate and charge on a per-message or per-page basis to communications software you can install on your network server to programs that reside on individual PCs -- getting all your faxes to go in email or all your email to go to the fax machine is easy. It has some remarkable benefits, too.
Getting emails by fax means that not everyone in the office needs to be online at the same time -- a great benefit if you're router-limited. It means that you don't get side-tracked reading sixteen offers and the latest birthday party announcement while getting to the real mail (this stuff is somehow easier to file circular when you're holding it in your hands). It means less eye strain from staring at that awful little screen all the time. Sending emails by fax can give your message a weight it may not have in electronic form. Like the difference between a paper airline ticket and an electronic reservation, some old-school businesspeople take faxes more seriously than email. To survive, they'll need to change; but in the meantime, you can capitalize on their prejudice towards dead trees by killing a few in the name of progress.
Getting faxes by email means that you're no longer tied down to the office. If you can read your mail by web (and who can't these days?) then you can get that fax in Tokyo if that's where you happen to be. Sending faxes by email means no more getting up and making the long journey to the shared fax, waiting in line, getting a busy signal, trying again, accidentally putting the paper in upside-down, trying yet again, and calling to make sure it went through. It also means you can reach Fred with a fax if he's in Tokyo.
Phone vs. Voice Mail vs. Cell
This one gets a little more interesting, but I'll keep it simple. Having too many phone lines can drive you crazy. Keep the one(s) you really need and redirect everything else. Let's see how we can do that.
Cord-cutting is the newest trend in audio communications. That means going without a wired phone and relying strictly on wireless (cellular or PCS). Need a defibrillator? Relax, take a deep breath and think about it for a minute. With only a cell phone, you're always available when you want to be. And not available when you don't want to be. For a typical nine-to-fiver, you can easily get that many hours out of your battery and just put it in the charger before you go home. It means callers no longer have to wade through difficult phone menus to get to you and your office is the world (at least within the cell tower limits). It can work.
If you're not quite so bold, try a communications package that allows you to redirect calls. This can be as simple as call forwarding from the phone company or your PBX system ... or as fancy as automated PC software that forwards based on caller ID, time of day and your scheduling. Directing all your calls to one source helps keep you sane -- yes, I have been talking on the land line when the cell phone rings and vice versa. It's easier to let one get a busy signal or voice mail than to interrupt one conversation to explain that you're on the other line right now.
For the really wacky stunt, there are online services as well as communications software packages that will type your voice mail and fax it to you ... or read your faxes over the phone. They're not perfect, but they work pretty well. You can figure out the occasional missed word for a complete message. Get your voice mail by email or by fax if you're out of the office and don't want to incur long-distance or other phone charges from listening to all those voice mails.
The Pager
For most people, pagers are going the way of 8-tracks. But they can be a useful screening tool. A pager can be programmed to tell you when you a) have a phone call b) have voice mail c) have a fax waiting d) have an email waiting. Text pagers can give you caller ID or email sender information so you can decide if it's really important enough to stop what you're doing or not. Many newer services also send headlines, sports scores, stock prices and other newsworthy items based on your preferences. I know of at least one person who uses his pager as a watch and a newspaper when waiting anywhere (airport, doctor's office, bus stop) and keeps on top of everything that way.
Instant Messaging
Some businesses are going with instant messaging software to immediately initiate communications internally. How this works: I type a message which pops up on your screen in front of whatever you were doing. You type back and we have a one-on-one chat going. I have yet to see an office continue to use this technology for any length of time. It is simply too difficult to concentrate on your computer task (and maybe the phone if you're reading off the screen or typing in a customer order) and still accept incoming pop-up messages. Not only that, but this is the only communications medium I'll talk about that can't be converted into something else. Some businesses still use this for customer support, but only assign it to personnel whose sole job is customer support. That's probably about the best use for the technology that I've seen, so stay away from this if it comes near your desk.
There are a lot (often too many) options in the world of communications these days; I hope I've shown you some choices you may not have known about and maybe helped you to reduce your daily interruption count.
Not every solution is right for everybody, and I wouldn't pretend to know your needs without a thorough evaluation. But if you're ready to take the next step on any of these options, simply type the terms (i.e. "fax to email") in your favorite search engine and scads of choices will be at your fingertips. For software-based solutions, try the same search at Epinions.com. Now, if you'll excuse me, the phone's ringing and I have 48 unread emails.