If you work remotely either part-time or full-time, temporarily or permanently, you have probably discovered that you are a lot more productive when you are not in the office. The main reason for the increase in productivity is that people aren’t inviting you to “got a minute” meetings. These meetings are unannounced drop-ins that always take more than a minute and result in people stealing your time—unintentionally or not.

Got-a-minute meetings can be frustrating and time-consuming. You may wonder why so many people want to steal your time. This happens for a variety of reasons.

It makes their job easier. Some people are stealing your time because they know you will say yes to their requests. They know they can get out of doing their work because you’ll do it for them. This is sometimes called “reverse delegation” and can happen when you delegate a task to a team member or co-worker. When they ask you a question about it, you take the task back from them instead of helping them find the answer.

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