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I’ve been working steadily for hours but I feel as if I haven’t even started yet. My attention is drawn from the task at hand—writing this story—by countless what I believe are necessary interruptions in the work. (Well, there were a couple of my cats, who are also firm believers in their necessity.)
My kids and I call days like this “squirrel days.” In honor of the drillThe talking dog in “Squirrel!!” the 2009 Pixar film.higher“, which (Squirrel!!) was constantly distracted well, only by (Squirrel!!)…
Unfortunately, many of us have “squirrel” days, according to Dr. Gloria Mark, a professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, who studies how digital media affects our lives. In her book “Attention span“A pioneering way to restore balance, happiness and productivity,” Mark explains how decades of research has tracked a decline in the ability to focus.
“In 2004, we measured average attention on a screen to be two and a half minutes,” Mark said. “After a few years, we found that the attention span was about 75 seconds. Now we find that people can pay attention to just one screen for 47 seconds on average.
Not only do people focus for less than a minute on any one screen, but when attention is diverted from an active work project, they take about 25 minutes to refocus on that task, Mark said. (Wait what??)
“In fact, our research shows that it takes 25 minutes and 26 seconds before we return to the original work or project domain,” Mark said.
How can that be? “If we look at work in terms of switching projects, rather than the partial view of switching screens, we find that people spend about 10 and a half minutes on any work project before they get interrupted — internally or by someone else — and then move on to another work project,” he said. Mark.
Yes, but then we go back to the original work, right? Mark said: Wrong. Instead, when we are interrupted on the second project, we move back to a different task – call it the third project. Incredibly, her research showed that we also stopped at Project Three and moved on to Project Four.
“Then you go back and pick up the original project that was interrupted,” Mark said. “But it’s not like you’re interrupted and doing nothing. For more than 25 minutes, you’re actually working on other things.”
(At least I can tell my boss about it when I miss a deadline.)
“However, there is also the cost of switching,” Mark added. “The cost of switching is the time it takes to get back to your work: ‘Where were I?’ What was I thinking? This extra effort can also lead to errors and stress.
Why is all this a problem? After all, it’s called multitasking, which many believe is a highly valuable skill for coping with the demands of the information age.
“Except for a few rare individuals, there is no such thing as multitasking,” Mark said. “Unless one of the tasks is automatic, like chewing gum or walking, you won’t be able to do two stressful things at the same time.”
For example, she said, you can’t read email and participate in a video meeting. When you focus on one thing, you lose out on the other. “You actually switch your attention pretty quickly between the two,” Mark said. “When you shift your attention quickly, that is associated with stress.”
Blood pressure rises. Heart rate accelerates. Psychological measures of stress also show negative outcomes, such as more fatigue, errors, and lower productivity: “The more people multitask, the more mistakes they make,” she said.
Who did this to us? We did this, of course, with the help of techno-crime perpetrators e.g Social mediaAnd tablets and TV. But Mark blames email the most.
“For me, email is probably the worst because it has become a symbol of work,” she said, adding that her research has found a direct relationship between email and more stress.
“We cut off email for some employees at one organization for one work week,” she said. “By using heart rate monitors, we found that they became significantly less stressed and were able to focus for much longer.”
(I find myself pausing to look up flights to Bora Bora. Well, they have email there, too.)
“No one can be completely cut off from technology and work in today’s world,” Mark said. “So let’s learn to live with it in a way that preserves our positive well-being.”
Regaining your focus requires you to be mindful of how you use technology, a daunting task if you consider average American spending, Mark said. At least 10 hours a day on screens.
Ironically, you can use technology to help, she said. Schedule routine work for the first part of the day when you’re not fully alert, then use technology to block distractions when you’re at your mental best. At night, clear your mind of tasks by writing them down and then putting the list away.
Distracted by social media? “Hide them: Remove icons from your desktop and bury apps on your phone inside folders, where they take extra effort to find,” Mark said. “Leave your phone in another room or put it in a drawer and lock it.”
It is also important to learn when to take a break. “If you have to read something more than once or if words don’t register, it’s time to stop and refresh,” she said.
The best break is A nature walk“Just a 20-minute walk in nature can greatly help people relax,” Mark said. “And we found that it can help people produce significantly more ideas — that’s what it’s called Divergent thinking“.
Too cold to walk outside? Do something engaging that requires no mental effort.
“I have a friend who is a professor at MIT, and his favorite activity is matching socks,” Mark said. “Another friend loves ironing. Ideas can incubate and then we get back to the hard work, seeing it with new eyes.
