Over at Marci Alboher’s always excellent blog, author Maggie Jackson shares some interesting thoughts about the modern workplace’s culture of distractions.   Among other findings, Jackson reports that:

• “The average knowledge worker switches tasks every three minutes, and, once distracted, a worker takes nearly a half-hour to resume the original task.”

 • “Interruptions and the requisite recovery time now consume 28 percent of a worker’s day.”

Jackson’s answer: “a renaissance of attention,” built largely around three skills that neuroscientists say comprise the essence of attention.  Worth reading. 

2 Responses to “Sorry for the interruption”

  1. Tim says:
    June 23, 2008 at 5:04 pm

    I have no doubt distractions are way up, but the math for this study doesn’t make sense. If we get distracted every 3 minutes, and it takes us ~30 minutes to return to the project, that means in an 8 hour day we’re getting 16*3 = 48 minutes of work done. That can’t be right.

  2. Rob Carty says:
    July 14, 2008 at 12:10 pm

    While not doing the math myself, I think at least she’s onto something. Recently frustrated at the end of the day by looking what I wanted to get done, and what I actually got done, I started tracking my own interruptions using an Excel spreadsheet. Interruptions included were always unplanned, such as phone calls, hallway diversions, and office drop-ins. While creating a great social climate and often great new ideas, my data was not far off at times if you include her calculation about the time it takes to get ramped-up again. Add planned meetings and planned phone calls/email review and response to the spreadsheet and the time left to “get it done” (for me at least) was frighteningly minimal.