29 April 2022
Distraction Management and Technology
Practical Tools for Minimizing Distractions and Maximizing Flow
by Jason Haller
Advances in technology have made almost everything exponentially easier, faster, and more available, including your chances of being distracted. With the onslaught of stimuli hitting your brain every day, it can be difficult to stay on one task long enough to have a chance of getting into flow.
That’s where distraction management, along with many of the other flow principles discussed in this series, comes into play. By limiting what can take away your attention during a productive work block, and learning how to cultivate a more substantial attention span in general, we can dramatically improve our chances of reaching a flow state and our ability to enjoy the present moment.
First, let's discuss what’s happening to our attention due to our modern lifestyle and heavy technology usage. ADT, or attention deficit trait, is a genuine neurological phenomenon that is becoming more and more prevalent as we interact with our digital devices on a scale never before seen in human history. Unlike ADHD, which has a genetic component much like type I diabetes, ADT is entirely brought on by lifestyle and environment, much like type II diabetes. Constant distractions, obligations, notifications, rushing, multitasking, chronic stress, and algorithms that feast on dopamine are at the core of what drives the development of ADT. Unfortunately, those are things that just happen to be part of everyday life now. So, as opposed to 50 or 100 years ago, when daily life wasn’t this taxing for our brains, we need to work harder to preserve our ability to focus than ever before.
ADT is marked by feelings of inner frenzy, distractibility, and impatience, leaving that person with difficulty staying organized, setting priorities, and managing time. These symptoms serve to undermine the talents and productivity of what should be an otherwise functional and helpful coworker or executive.
If you’re wondering how prevalent this issue is, a study on hurry sickness, which is highly similar to ADT, found that 95% of the managers studied suffered from the condition. Of course, these conditions may have been around before in a small subset of the population, in jobs that required constant switching of attention, high stakes, and very little time off, like a stockbroker, a sous chef at a Michelin star restaurant, or maybe even a mother of nine children. But now, we all have ample ways to fry our brains and erode our attention to bring on negative symptoms and behaviors.
Smartphones, mixed with the powerful social media algorithms, prey on your dopamine response and aim to get you addicted to apps and screen time. They teach your brain to look for the “next thing” for stimulation in the process. If a post was good, what might happen if you scroll a little further? Maybe an even better, more entertaining, or more stimulating post awaits! This type of activity is not conducive to cultivating the attention span or focus required to achieve a flow state or even to just sit at a dinner table without feeling restless unless you’ve checked your phone in the last ten minutes.
People functioned in society for thousands of years without a smartphone in their pocket. You don’t need it in the bathroom, during sleep, on the desk face up during zoom meetings, or in your pocket on a walk. If you can’t handle a couple of these activities without your phone, you may want to start asking yourself why. The most distracting place for your phone is in sight with notifications on or in your pocket. Leave your phone out of sight and out of reach to be more engaged at work and in your personal life.
Email isn’t much better for the average worker and has been identified as the number one source of distraction in the workplace. The practice of constantly checking email throughout the day, with some studies finding an average of 36 checks per hour, is highly detrimental to our attention. This is mainly due to a concept known as attention residue, which essentially means when we split our attention, we are more easily overwhelmed, more prone to making errors, and have more difficulty making decisions. Even small shifts in attention can cause this effect to happen. So, a brief check of the inbox and a short reply may seem harmless, but in reality, you just cost yourself up to 20 minutes of attention residue and undermine peak productivity. A worker or executive who spends their entire day trying to accomplish work when constantly switching tasks or being distracted will likely never reach a flow state. They will undoubtedly, over time, develop symptoms of ADT. This style of work will feel less productive, stressful, and unsustainable.
“Continuous partial attention happens when people’s focus is continuously split. The effect is constant and intense mental exhaustion. To pay continuous partial attention is to keep a top-level item in focus and constantly scan the periphery in case something more important emerges.” - Linda Stone, former VP at Microsoft.
In his most recent book, A World Without Email, Cal Newport reminds us that we sent men to the moon without email and a computer that would be put to shame by a modern smartphone. He describes how we previously relied on systems and procedures set up for efficiency of communication, rather than how we currently use email and other administrative duties out of sheer ease and convenience.
There was a shift in the 1990s away from on-staff administrators and toward technology that would allow everyone at the company to perform their administrative responsibilities at a rudimentary level. The idea was to cut costs by reducing the need for a salaried staff of administrators. Still, the hidden cost is that other employees’ work has been diluted now that they spend as much as 40% of their time checking and responding to emails.
The lesson here is not that we need to get rid of our smartphones, stop using email, and become Buddhist monks unless that’s your thing. Instead, we need to be mindful of our surroundings and understand some assembly may be required to optimize our attention span and workflow. Sitting down and being productive for two to three hours on a single project is becoming increasingly rare.
Distractions and misuse of technology have reached a point where we spend most of our workday switching from task to task or attending countless meetings, or in general, spending more time talking about work than actually doing it. We rarely, if ever, have the chance to become fully immersed in a project and work at a natural pace to produce our highest quality work. Without attention and focus, we lose our ability to get into flow, be maximally productive and enjoy the present moment. At this time, the environment we all live in is not conducive to a balanced lifestyle that allows for moments of pure focus mixed with moments free from obligations and notifications tugging at our attention. However, that doesn’t mean we have to fall victim to the pressures surrounding us. Check out the tips below for strategies you have control over to help you create more balance, focus, and flow in your life.
Practical Tools
- Batch emails. Email batching is the practice of going through your emails at regular intervals. By performing this activity in batches, you free yourself from one of the most significant sources of workplace distractions. Good places to try are a morning batch, an early afternoon batch, and an end-of-day batch. Of course, some situations require more frequent checking, but the value lies in the reduced attention residue.
- Be intentional with smartphone usage. Smartphones can be incredibly helpful and boost productivity tremendously, or they can do the opposite. The difference is usually a function of the user's intention. For example, if you open your phone as a reflex reaction because you’re bored, the outcome will likely be wasted time and erosion of your attention span. Even if the goal is entertainment, there’s a big difference between mindlessly scrolling and tugging at infinite feeds waiting for the perfect content to pop up compared to spending a minute ahead of time deciding what you’re in the mood for directly searching for that thing.
- Take mindfulness or low stimulation breaks. Even short breaks throughout the day can bring huge dividends to your mental health and ability to focus. For example, a quick 10-15 minute walk outside after a meal or series of zoom meetings can help sharpen the mind and help mobilize some energy for your body. If you can’t walk, just closing your eyes in a quiet area and focusing on your breathing for a few minutes can help to lower cortisol and reduce feelings of anxiety and scattered thinking.
- Digital detox. Once in a while, it can be helpful to turn your phone off for a day or maybe an entire weekend and avoid checking your email and computer. This period of low stimulus or boredom is a good way to help you resensitize. We get used to the constant flurry of information we are forced to process regularly and lose sight of how taxing that is. A digital detox is not a cure but can be a helpful glimpse that invites us to reprioritize and create space for more balance in our lives.
- Manage notifications. Turn off all notifications when you need to be focused and productive in a work block. Trust that you will get to anything important during your next inbox check. On the other hand, if you aren’t in the middle of a work block and are waiting for a reply to something, it is far less stressful to keep the notifications on. Understand the situation you’re in and manage your notifications appropriately.
- Protect your and others’ autonomy. If you feel micromanaged and constantly pulled away from your most important work due to distractions or administrative obligations, that’s likely not the best use of your time and energy. Instead, identify what you are good at and become better at it. The more value you bring, the higher quality of your work will be, and the more freedom you will earn.
If you are interested in learning more about how Five to Flow can improve the five core elements of your organization, contact us today. For more information on flow concepts and how they improve business health, visit the Collective Voices blog for more articles.