Bud, a grain buyer working in a billion-dollar agricultural co-op, is always on the road helping farmers sell their grain. His work involves navigating transactions with numerous collaboration partners—contractors, schedulers, truckers, grain elevator operators, processors, financers, and sometimes more.

Bud wrote in an email, “I just took it for granted that most of my communication with most of these people was so informal and unstructured. So, I started carrying a notebook. I pull out my notebook and take notes at each stop, all day. My end-of-the-day routine now is to send out a bunch of emails based on my notes. It just squares up what I did during the day and keeps things from slipping through the cracks.”

Add structure to unstructured interactions at work, and you will get much better substance. That is especially true when it comes to interruptions—those unwelcome questions or comments that someone drops on you when you’re right in the middle of something........

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