Wait, what was I doing? Combating time fragmentation and attention residue.

Over the last few weeks, I have been packing up everything I own to move to a new town. The process of moving is always stressful (though it can be exciting as well!), and a bit part of the stress is the way all the little tasks of moving show up as constant distractions. There are boxes everywhere reminding you that you meant to pack that book you finished last night, the morning mail arrival makes you realize you need to start forwarding the mail, and then there's the actual process of moving, which never comes at a convenient time.

For the last few weeks, I've had my time divided up into smaller and smaller slices every day, and even though I'm still working roughly the same hours, it feels like I haven't made anywhere near as much progress is usual. The first few times this happened to me (I have moved many times in the last few years), I was frustrated. I was still working as much as I had planned, squeezing in 15 minutes here and 20 there on projects. So if I was putting in the same time, why was I not getting the same results?

It turns out that the quality of the time you spend working is far more important than the quantity (those of you who have followed my blog for a while will not be surprised to hear me say this). When your hours are split up into many little pieces, this is known as time fragmentation.

Time Fragmentation
Our world -- whether we are in the middle of a move or not -- is full of distractions. Most of our technology is built to distract us from what we are doing so that we pay attention to it (social media is a great example of this, though there are many other examples). Distractions, like ad pop-ups, show up so frequently that it's amazing we get anything done at all. And this is not just an artifact of addictive phone apps -- our culture is one of urgency. When things arise, we feel we must address them immediately, and this pulls our attention away from whatever longer-timescale work we were doing. That can be email, social media, news alerts, or a coworker popping their head in to remind you about something.
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​Our time has become increasingly fragmented. The average "knowledge worker" spends more than 60% of the work week on electronic communication and internet search (according to a 2012 McKinsey study). And the biggest problem with time fragmentation is the way our brains respond to it. This is a concept called attention residue.

Attention Residue
The human brain is not actually an efficient multitasker, at least not when it comes to higher-order processes. It's very adept at regulating chemicals, making sure you continue breathing, and other "background tasks" while you use your critical thinking skills, but you cannot focus on two things at the same time.  I'm sorry to be the one to tell you that watching TV while you work is not going to make you more productive.

Unfortunately, the human brain is also not as good at task switching as we would like it to be. If you are interrupted in the middle of a task that requires some cognitive effort, your brain is scrambling to hold on to what you were doing before and your attention will not be fully on either task. This 2009 research paper goes into more detail about the psychological effects of attention residue on task completion, but the most important thing to note is that interruptions reduce performance on subsequent tasks.

So how do I fix this?
The goal is to get long, unbroken stretches of time to focus on your work. Here are a couple of ways you can try to reduce time fragmentation.

Keep a running list of distracting thoughts 
Put a notepad or piece of paper next to you while you work. Every time something pops into your head that you feel the urge to do (that is not what you are currently focusing on), just write it down. Get it out of your brain and on to the paper, so your mind doesn't feel the need to hang on to it. You can later sort that list using urgent-important matrices, and having a process for handling these distracting thoughts can help your brain let go.

Block off time in your schedule for focused work in chunks of at least an hour
If you work from home, turn off any ways for people to contact you. Close slack and email, turn your phone on silent, even disconnect from the internet if it's possible. If you have a private office, close your door. You can write a note to put on your door asking people to email you and letting them know when you'll be available again if you feel pressure to engage. An hour is not really a very long time to be unreachable, we're just so unused to doing it.

​This is all harder if you work in a shared office or open-plan office space. In those cases, see if you can either leave the office every so often to work in a coffee shop or other public space. Or have a quick conversation with your coworkers letting them know you will be putting in earphones and listening to white noise in order to focus, and that while you have your earphones in, you would like to not be interrupted. 

Put your phone in a drawer
If you find yourself checking your phone reflexively like I do, it can be really helpful just to put it somewhere you won't see it. The first few times, you will still go looking for it to distract yourself (I speak from experience), but those extra steps of having to remember what drawer you put it in and then open the drawer to get it out can be enough time to snap you out of the reflex and prevent the worst of the attention residue. Over time, you will stop reaching as often for your phone.

Use sound as a barrier
If you are easily distracted by noise from other offices or are likely to get pulled into conversations happening near you, try using music or some neutral sounds like ocean sounds, rainstorm soundtracks, and white noise to create an aural barrier. Be careful not to pick music that will distract you -- it needs to be something your brain will automatically filter out, rather than pay close attention to.

Focus in peace!
It takes a little bit of effort to reduce your time fragmentation and attention residue. Sometimes that effort includes conversations that might feel a little uncomfortable in our era of constant connectivity. It's easy to feel guilty for not being reachable every second of every day, but I think you'll find if you start by taking an hour for yourself each day, you'll find that the imagined crises that would pop up never materialize.

I hope these tips help you manage your time so that your attention isn't hanging on to too many things at once. Now that my focused work time is over, I'm going to go back to unpacking some boxes. Stay well!