Some of your colleagues may simply be less busy — or less efficient — than you are, and their insistence on stopping by your desk to chat or bombarding you with needless information about projects you’re working on together can quickly deaden your productivity.

I once worked the night shift for a media monitoring firm where deadlines were tight and the work load was huge. As you know, being in the media requires you to be sharp, attentive to detail and concentrate fully on whatever you are doing lest you miss out on small but important client details. This means that everyone was busy the entire time and every minute mattered as we had extremely tight deadlines. Now there was this colleague who reported to work early (by 5pm) unlike I who reported at the beginning of my shift (exactly 7pm).  The most annoying thing is that as soon as the clock hit midnight and he needed a break, he would come to my desk to catch up/chat. By this time he would have probably covered three quarters of his work and I would be halfway through with mine.

Here I was, doing my best to concentrate and finish my work in time and someone was seemingly determined to waste my precious time! To make matters worse, he was kind of my superior. This distraction annoyed me to bits!

No one intends for their communication to be a burden. It’s not like people do this with the sole purpose of distracting you from your most important work. If you have colleagues that are needlessly demanding too much of your time, here are five strategies you can use to politely deflect them.

    1. Make sure chatty colleagues leave with something to do for you

If you’re busy working on a report that’s due in an hour and your coworker demands you give them the time to tell you about the Gor Mahia Vs AFC Leopards game on Sunday, tell them you’re glad they stopped by, and ask them to help you with something you won’t be able to do until after the report is finished. It’s like being in two places at once. If they leave with work, they’ll think twice about coming back again to chitchat, especially when you are so busy!

  2. Be uninteresting

If your coworker wants to talk sports, make sure to tell them you’re not really interested in them. If they ask if you saw the game last Sunday, let them know that you didn’t (even if you did). They will probably still give you the highlights, but they won’t go over the details if it’s clear you are not interested in what they’re talking about. The same applies for other topics of conversation as well. Eventually your chatty coworker will stop passing by your desk to chat, and will go find someone they can have a two-sided conversation with.

A little verbal trickery and body language can go a long way towards making your chatty coworker understand that you are really busy and not available for a chat at work.

  3. Move Your Seat

Sometimes there’s little you can do to prevent a colleague(s) from bothering you even if you say all the right things. In such a situation ask your manager to let you move your desk or cubicle to a new location that hopefully will be less of a problem. This would only work in offices where you don’t have to be in a specific place. Like close to your boss or near a specific team. If you have the opportunity to move across a floor, up or down a floor, or somewhere out of the way for that coworker, or if your problem isn’t so much a single person but that your desk is in a high-traffic area and everyone wants to talk to you, this could be a good option.

For example if your desk was right outside a boardroom, that means that everyone coming in or out of the boardroom would walk past your desk and would probably stop to say hi. If the boardroom was occupied with a late-running meeting and another was supposed to start, the attendees for the late-starting meeting would most likely congregate around your desk until the room was free, and of course they would want to talk. People leaving meetings to answer their phones or chat after a meeting would stand near your desk to talk. This can be all distracting and while you may like talking to people, you will eventually have to move your desk. If you are in such a position, your boss should understand and it shouldn’t be difficult to convince them to let you find a new seat in a more secluded space.

  4. Talk to your workmate

It can be awkward to have a conversation with your colleague about the way you work together, but if his/her chatty behavior is persistent, you’re going to get annoyed — and your frustration will likely start to seep out in unhelpful, passive aggressive ways and might even affect your productivity. Instead, bring it up directly and let them know that you would like to chat but you are a bit busy and will maybe meet up later for a drink/coffee after work to socialize and to catch up. Remember to be polite and choose your words and non verbal cues wisely lest he/she misinterprets your well meaning intentions.  Doing this will let your workmate know that despite being busy at the moment, you don’t want to shut them off completely and are willing to meet up later outside work to socialize and to catch up.

If after doing all these your colleague still insists on chit chat even when you are busy with your work, let your boss know that their behavior is affecting your productivity.  Remember, it really is about what helps you work best, rather than your workmate doing something wrong.

What are some of the things that you do to fend off overly chatty workmates?