The Devil is in the… Emails
Productivity is top of mind these days. We’re all looking for ways to be more effective with our time, yet also prioritize self-care. We’re asked to yield better and faster results, while not burning ourselves out. Is this balance even possible? Brain science may provide a window into some potential solutions.
When you look across a given week in your job, how much time would you categorize as uninterrupted “deep work” versus interrupted “shallow work”? Many of us are likely swimming in the shallow end.
However, brain science shows us that a distracted pattern of work may be a key factor in what prevents us from both doing high-quality work, as well as feeling well-rested.
What are some of the biggest offenders of this kind of interrupted shallow work?
Emails
Texts
Phone calls
Pop-ins
Overbooked schedules
Back-to-back meetings
All of these opportunities to task-switch at a fast and recurring pace keeps our brains in a distracted mode. This is exhausting and prevents the kind of creativity and thoughtfulness we can only access when not being interrupted. Even more, our brains get a hit of the chemical dopamine when we anticipate and receive new messages. So the temptation to check and read these messages becomes increasingly stronger, training our brain to desire and follow-through with this ineffective pattern.
Cal Newport, author of “Deep Work” says,
“When you switch from Task A to another Task B, your attention doesn’t immediately follow—a residue of your attention remains stuck thinking about the original tasks. Even if you finish Task A before moving on, your attention remains divided for a while. People experiencing attention residue after switching tasks are likely to demonstrate poor performance on that next task, and the more intense the residue the worse the performance.”
“It might seem harmless to take a quick glance at your inbox every ten minutes or so… That quick check introduces a new target for your attention. The attention residue left by such unresolved switches dampens your performance. To produce at your peak level, you need to work for extended periods with full concentration on a single task free from distraction” (Newport, 2016).
What might this look like for students in classrooms or when doing homework? A very similar scenario. The use of cell phones and anticipation of messages prevents students’ brains from being fully attentive to learning, diminishing their ability to engage and create strong memories for what they are learning. Research shows that the mere presence of cell phones on students’ desks (even if they never interact with it), pulls their attentional resources and results in diminished working memory and fluid intelligence during learning (Ward et al., 2017).
Here’s the good news though: We can take more control over how we spend our time, and how much we allow interruptions to break up our concentration. The same is true for how we design experiences for students and staff.
Here are a few ideas for how to minimize interruptions:
Try disabling visual and audible notifications when new emails or texts arrive on your devices.
Try checking email and texts at fewer designated times in the day when you can respond in a batch style, rather than as they arrive.
Try moving your phone or tablets physically away from you for periods of time so you are less tempted to engage with it when you are trying to do deep work.
If you need to have a complex or sensitive conversation with someone, don’t choose email or text as a method for communication. It will take time to write and probably be misinterpreted. Pick up the phone or talk in person. This will likely save time and strengthen the relationship.
If you manage staff or students, try protecting their time to work on given tasks by blocking other requests during that time.
We know certain jobs make less feasible than others, but I encourage you to find any small opportunities where you can claim some agency over your time. Finding even small pockets of time for deeper thinking, learning, and work without interruptions may end up giving you more time back in the end. I have experimented with this in my own daily routine by limiting times for checking and responding to messages, and it is already making noticeable differences in productivity, energy, and well-being.
References
Newport, C. (2016). Deep work: Rules for focused success in a distracted world. Grand Central Publishing.
Ward, A. F., Duke, K., Gneezy, A., & Bos, M. W. (2017). Brain drain: The mere presence of one’s own smartphone reduces available cognitive capacity. Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 2(2), 140-154.
