You, Interrupted

We all know the feeling.

You’re hard at work on a project, getting your best work done. You’re in the zone and feeling motivated. It's as if the ideas are flowing and things are coming together with ease.

🔔Ping 🔔

A text message arrives from your friends about a trip y’all are doing together soon. ✈️Your mind wanders to the last time you went to the beach with your friends. 🏖 You think about the good times, the drinks, the friends, the wigs, the heels, the laughs. 🍹👠🤣 You assume more texts are on their way but you decide not to respond because you want to focus.

You turn off the phone screen.

As you slowly think less and less about the beach, your mind starts to pay attention again to the task at hand.

Where was I? 🤔Ah, yes. 💡I remember now.

You really start to zone back into what you were doing, which you’re able to do for while. You’re back in the zone.

🔔Ping 🔔

Another friend responds and shares how excited he is. 🥳This friend triggers you since y'all had an “interesting” interaction previously. 🤨You start to reminisce about the argument y’all had, and your subconscious does its job, still trying to prove you were right in that situation. 🤬You run it over in your head a couple of times. 🧐

No, you tell yourself. Back to work. 

You turn off your phone’s screen and focus again on the task at hand. The beach is still in the foreground of your mind, but slowly you get back into the zone.

🔔Ping 🔔

Another friend chimes in with excitement about the trip. 

🔔Ping 🔔

🔔Ping 🔔

Oh, to be vacationing again!!!!

You see where this is going...

The myth of multitasking

Theoretically, let's just say all of the above text messages occurred during a 30-minute period you dedicated toward work on a project. And let’s also say you never responded to any of the text messages. Later that day, if you were asked how long you spent on that project, you would probably answer, “I spent 30 minutes on it.” Right?

But is that really a fair assessment?

Let’s say only 60 seconds were spent actually checking the phone or addressing the text messages. So, truly, you had 29 minutes of effectiveness, right?

The science says no.

Dr. Sophie Leroy is an expert in attention and did research on this exact topic. What she discovered was the phenomenon known as attention residue. 

What is attention residue?

The notion is that every time you pay attention to something different, you've left a little bit of your attention behind because you cannot focus your cognitive processes on something new without a little bit of leftover residue. 

Think of Slimer from Ghostbusters.

He can go through walls and travel anywhere he wants, just like our mind, but even when he leaves, a little bit of him is left behind in the previous room on the wall, visualized as green leftover slime. He’s gone, but a little of him is not.

That idea holds true with our thoughts. You cannot safely switch your focus without there being a lingering deficit. Our brains are just not wired that way. As a result, any time you're switching your attention to something that is not the task at hand, you've given up a little bit of your ability to focus.

Of course, with some time, you can gain it back, but not without consequence. So while you may have been in that chair for 30 minutes, you may have really had full attention to your project for 20 minutes.

That’s only 66% of your intended time. Wow.

So what can be done? There are a lot of options, but here are my top 3 methods of overcoming this:

1. Do Not Disturb (DND)

First of all, there's the good old do not disturb function (or even airplane mode). (There’s also the Focus feature on the iPhone, although I find that I allow some notifications during my focus times, so I lean heavier on DND).

Personally, I hold the time I do coaching calls as very sacred. I want very little to no interruption, so I use this function during my coaching calls. No interruptions, no distractions. 

As a data point, so far, I have yet to have something happen during a coaching call that was so urgent, it couldn't wait until after a coaching call. It has actually been quite magical to use this feature on my phone. I find that I am much more attentive to my clients whenever I don't have anything audial or visual distracting me.

2. Pomodoros & task batching

Another great tool is to do a pomodoro. The idea behind pomodoros is to block off 30 minute sections of time where you will work with no distraction. Set a timer for 25 minutes, turn on DND, and GO! During each block, you will spend that 25 minutes working on a project. At the buzzer, you get a 5-minute break to do whatever.

These are quite popular methods of productivity among groups, so you can likely find other people who are doing these. If not, hell, start your own group! At the very least, you can do this alone and set your own timer for 25 minutes followed by 5 minutes.

Another piece of blocking that is relevant is task batching, which simply means to do all similar tasks together. Most people work on email at all parts of the day. With batching, you instead do all emails during two or three blocks per day (like, say, 10a, 1p, and 4p) and do not look at it any other time. You do the same for all other projects. Instead of doing projects whenever you can squeeze it in, you set aside time for certain projects on certain days. Batching also helps keep you in the flow.

3. Keep a distraction log

When all else fails, LOG! 🪵For one week, write down all distractions that get in the way of your work. For example, that may look like writing down any text messages, phone calls, emails, or any other notifications that grab your attention. Include in the log:

• Date and time of the distraction

• Type of distraction (text, call, pop-up, knock on the door, etc.)

• Topic of the distraction

Then, at the end of each day, rank each item on a scale of 1 to 3, where a 1 was something that was low urgency and a 3 was something that needed to get done immediately. Reserve the 3s for true emergencies!

Finally, at the end of your week, sort through your list. Ask yourself, what type of distraction gave you the most problems? Was it your phone? Was it your neighbor’s dog? Was it your bed? 

Now, ask yourself how get rid of those 1s and 2s. Can you turn off push notifications for certain apps you don't need to know about? Can you turn off notifications on your computer that are distracting you? Can you better utilize iPhone’s Focus mode?

Do it for at least three of them. Now.

Attention residue is certainly an impactful and consequential distraction to everyday productivity. While there may be deeper and more significant block you are experiencing (and these kinds of blocks are things I help my clients out with regularly), it is my observation that this residue is a powerful and common problem. Give any of these techniques a try and let me know how it went for you. 

Be honest with yourself--are you getting too distracted?