There was a cool study done in 2009 at the University of Minnesota, which studied the effect of multitasking on productivity. The researchers realized that in the real world multi-tasking doesn’t really mean doing two things at the same time, it means constantly switching from one project to the next.
The study split participants into two groups and instructed each participant to work on a puzzle. In the first group, the observer only allowed the participants to work for a short amount of time, before interrupting them and instructing them to move on to another challenging task. But in the other group, they allowed each participant to finish the first puzzle before moving on to the next challenge. In between these tasks though, they tested each participants’ focus with a quick word game.
What’s interesting about the result was that they found a clear distinction in the word game performance between the two groups. The group that was interrupted and forced to move on, performed far worse than those who were allowed to finish the puzzle.
Those who were interrupted were still thinking about the puzzle, even after moving on. They coined the phenomenon “attention residue.”
The implication of attention residue then, is that if we are constantly being interrupted in our work by new emails we not only lose the time it tasks to check and reply to those emails, but also the extra time it takes for our brains to get back on track afterwards. Even if don’t check those emails, seeing and hearing that notification pop-up means that our brains are getting pulled out of focus.
Quote
“People experiencing attention residue after switching tasks are likely to demonstrate poor performance on that next task,”
Connections
Reference
Book: Deep Work Author: Cal Newport Location: 465