How to manage constant distraction at work?

Trying to focus on you work but getting constantly distracted? Don't worry you are one among the many who are facing this issue in today's accessible world and there are ways to fix this issue.

Disruptions, interruptions and distractions at work are a reality. We are used to working in teams, in open spaces, with smartphones, smartwatches and what not, all these add to distraction. In a highly collaborative world where work and information need to move through multiple people and teams, it is necessary that people interact and technology be used, which sometimes lead to distractions causing individual work to suffer. Meetings, text or chat messages, emails and co-workers etc, tend to divide our time and attention. In a survey of 202 professionals, 40% of the respondents faced more than 10 disruptions or interruptions a day while 15% reporting more than 20 interruptions. In major surveys around the world, from IT employees to other professionals, almost everybody gets interrupted every 6-12 minutes on an average. This is not a positive sign for anybody who wants to focus, think and get something done.

Based on a research by Sophie Leroy, it was studied that humans have a tendency of hanging on to their unfinished tasks which does not let them switch completely to a new task, when interrupted from the first task. Imagine I am working on a project X and I am fully engrossed in it, from nowhere my boss turns up and asks me to finish another report Y. I shift my attention to project Y to finish and hand over to my boss but a part of my attention stays with project X, I am unable to switch my 100% attention to the new project Y. This is called "Attention Residue." While we think that we have moved on to the new project and our attention has fully moved, it has not. Therefore, we keep performing the new task with only a part of our cognitive resources and risk performing them poorly.

The amount of "Attention Residue" depends on many factors, one of them is the time pressure to finish the task. A study published in 'Organization Science' gives a very interesting result to a test carried out on two groups of people. Both groups of people were asked to start a task, let's call it task A, then both groups were interrupted just after 10 minutes, were asked to stop task A and start another task B. Another important condition was put in, the first group was given a time pressure for task A and the second group was told they would have no time pressure to finish task A, that was interrupted. The results that came out of the study showed the first group who were given time pressure performed rather worse in task B, the interrupting task: than the second group who were told there will be no time pressure. The first group did not process information properly, did not notice errors, and when asked to make a decision based on recalled information, they were less likely to identify the optimal solution. In contrast, the second group who were told there would be no time pressure and they will get ample time to finish the interrupted task, switching away from it was less difficult, such that they didn't experience attention residue and performed at higher levels on the interrupting task B. Although the result show that without time constraints, "Attention Residue" can be significantly reduced, it is not possible considering today's high degree of time and deadline driven work.

A better way to deal with the deadline issue and reduce "Attention Residue" as well, is the "Ready-to-resume plan." The idea on which this plan is centred around is to relax and put the brain at ease while creating bookmarks to easily hook and start over, from where we left, upon our return to the interrupted task. This would not only help us switch our attention more effectively but would also save time. Same kind of study was conducted, but the only difference was the first group was interrupted from task A and straight away told to start task B but the second group was told to pause after stopping task A, to create a "Ready-to-resume plan" before starting with task B. The Ready-to-resume plan essentially was to take a minute to note where they were on the interrupted task, Task A and what they wanted to do and focus upon return, upon creating these virtual bookmarks, they switched to Task B. The results were impressive, it was found that those who engaged in "Ready-to-resume plan" experienced much less "Attention Residue" and performed significantly well on task B. Recall of information from the interrupting task was significantly improved, suggesting more careful attention to the task. They were also showing better decision making when dealing with complex information.

The Ready-to-resume plan took less than a minute yet it significantly improved the quality of work and attention to the interrupting task. It shows that pausing for a moment, mapping where you are and where you want to go by bookmarking it in your brain, helps in relaxing the brain and letting it feel more at ease with putting it aside and switching attention to pursue another task. The Ready-to-resume plan provides the brain, the cognitive closure it needs to reduce attention residue.

Conclusion:

The switch from one task to another due to interruptions and distractions leads to an increase in "Attention Residue" causing decreased performance in both interrupted and interrupting tasks. This "Attention Residue" can be reduced by lifting time constraints from the interrupted task because it is seen in a study that switching from one task to another while dealing with time constraint leads to worsening of performance. To deal with both time issue and reducing "Attention Residue" we recommend the "Ready-to-resume plan" which stops the transition from task A to task B by inducing a pause and introducing the creation of a Ready-to-resume blueprint, which consists of a virtual bookmarking of some information like where we are? where we want to go? and how to start over? This Ready-to-resume plan has shown to reduce "Attention Residue" significantly and considerably improve performance on the interrupting task.