071: Are You a Self Interrupter?

Welcome to Productivity Paradox from inkWELL Press, a podcast focused on  finding success and happiness through the power of productivity. Each season, Tanya  focuses on specific strategies to help you discover your own priorities and purpose.  Season six is all about turning your stumbling blocks into starting blocks. You can also  join Tanya for more interaction and support in her free Facebook group at  inkwellpress.com/group. And now, here’s your host, Tanya Dalton.  

Hello, hello, everyone. Welcome to Productivity Paradox. I’m your host, Tanya  Dalton, owner of inkWELL Press, and this is episode 71. Today’s episode is brought to  you by Blue Apron, and in a little bit I’ll be sharing how you can get a discount on  your first box. Let’s go ahead and get started talking about today’s topic.  

As you know, season six is all about turning our stumbling blocks into our  starting blocks. So I want you to ask yourself a question. Are you a self-interrupter?  Do you know what I mean by this? Often, when talking to people about their  obstacles, they tell me that they have a hard time getting real work done, or getting  into that coveted productivity zone, because they have far too may distractions. And  I agree, we have way too many distractions. People and things that disrupt our flow.  But I’ve found that many times these distractions are somewhat self-imposed. They’re  interruptions that we allow, and even sometimes invite into our day without even  realizing it. And that’s our obstacle I wanna tackle today. Not distractions, but self interruptions. And let’s see if we can turn this stumbling block into a starting block,  shall we?  

So here’s the thing, our world is technology-rich with notifications and alarms  and ringtones and vibrations, and all these things that steal our attention away. And  they trap us in a positive reinforcement loop as we talk and text and comment and  message anyone and everyone all at the same time, right? Have you heard the fun  fact that a goldfish has a nine second attention span? But did you know that we  humans just beat their record?  

A study from Microsoft has shown that people now generally lose  concentration after just eight seconds. And along with studying participants’ brain  activity, Microsoft surveyed their habits, and they found that we seem to think we’re  getting better at multitasking, and using multiple screens at once, despite the fact  that we can’t focus on a single screen for more than 10 seconds at a time. We seem  to think we should be able to multitask, but we don’t even seem capable of mono tasking.  

And you might remember we talked about mono-tasking way back in episode  10 in season one. And we discussed how our brains are not designed to multitask.  Another fun fact, the word multitasking is a word that’s only been around since 1966.  You know why? Because that word was used to describe computers. Computers were  designed to multitask, not people. And even that’s not accurate, because computers  process one line of code at a time. They just work so quickly that they appear to  

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multitask. We somehow assume, though, that we have this ability to multitask, even  though our brains are not computers, and certainly are not designed for it.  

But look around you. Look at people on their phones at restaurants, or walking  down the street. It seems almost impossible in today’s world to stay idle and simply  be alone with your thoughts. Doctor Larry D. Rosen’s lab has been studying our  distractability for the past decade, and he has seen an increase across generations for  how often people check their devices. The majority of young people check their  smartphones every 15 minutes or less. And yes, by calling them young people I just  dated myself as like an 80-year-old, right? But it’s true, the younger generation tend  to check their smartphones pretty often.  

Three out of four young adults sleep with their phones nearby with the ringer  on or on vibrate so they don’t miss notifications. And in the Microsoft survey I just  spoke about a few minutes ago, they asked participants if they agreed that, “When  nothing is occupying my attention, the first thing I do is reach for my phone.” 77% of  people aged 18 to 24 answered yes, compared to only 10% of those over the age of  65. But when asked if they agreed with the statement, “I often use other devices  while watching TV,” 79% of people aged 18 to 24 answered yes, and 42% of people  over the age of 65 also answered yes. That’s piling one distraction on top of the  other, using multiple devices all at once.  

We wanna say it’s an epidemic for the youth or millennials, but it’s not. People  of all ages are allowing their phones to drag them from one distraction to the next,  much like Pavlov’s dog. As a matter of fact, in another study a group of young adults  and another group of older adults wore biometric belts with embedded eyeglass  cameras during their leisure time. The younger adults switched from task to task 27  times per hour, so about once every two minutes, while the older adults weren’t that  much better. They switched tasks 17 times per hour, or once every three to four  minutes.  

Everyone is trying to multitask in some way, shape or form, and it’s not  surprising, because we are bombarded with so many opportunities. In web  development, there’s this thing called the four second rule, and this rule shows that  the average website user is likely to leave a site if it doesn’t load within four seconds.  More recent work shows it may actually be closer to two seconds, which means we  have this need for instant gratification, and when it’s not met we move along,  whether it’s to our benefit or not.  

Judy Wajcman, a sociology professor at the London School of Economics,  wanted to see how technology interfered in a real workplace, and she conducted a  study that shadowed employees of an Australian telecommunications company  throughout their entire day. The employees in this study spent only about half their  workday on actual work-related tasks. Most of these episodes lasted about 10  minutes or less, about three minutes on average. Interestingly, nearly two thirds of the  interruptions to these episodes were self-generated, mostly involving digital  communication or checking in on email or work chats, even without an external alert  or notification.  

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Another study that followed workers for two weeks found that they were  interrupted over four times an hour by email. Even worse, 41% of the workers  responded to their emails immediately. And on average, the workers were spending  10 minutes dealing with emails and messages, and then took another 10 to 15 minutes  to get back on task. It’s been reported that even without an email alert, one in three  people claim to check their email every 15 minutes. In reality, they check it about  every five. This means we’re self-interrupting, and we’re not even aware of it.  

You know what I’m talking about, we’ve all done it. We check our phone for  email, see nothing in there, and then inexplicably, we check it again two minutes later,  right? Did we expect something to change in that time? Or the bigger question is  what do we expect to find in there? We have to stop checking email incessantly like  we’re hunting for a prize at the bottom of the cereal box, when there’s really nothing  more than cereal in there. I don’t know about your email inbox, but mine is more like  Grape-Nuts than it is Froot Loops. Not a ton of fun and excitement going on in reality.  So we have to stop checking incessantly, we have to stop interrupting ourselves  without even realizing it.  

We already know that switch-tasking like this is harmful to our productivity, so  why do we do it all the time? Why are we often finding ourselves, without meaning  to, interrupting our own time? Well, we can’t be too hard on technology for our  shorter attention spans. It’s technically the fault of our brains because we’ve been  programmed to always seek out new information.  

From an evolutionary standpoint, our cave ancestors knew it was important to  always be on the lookout for food, water, predators. And when we spotted these  things, it wasn’t that important to get back to the original task. So our brain is primed  to constantly be on the lookout for new information. And then it’s not so great at  getting back to the old information it was previously looking at, and it just starts  ignoring it. It’s similar to those noise-canceling headphones. Your brain uses energy  to filter out distractions around you. But when we overload our brain and we don’t  give it space, it’s like not charging those headphones. It simply stops filtering out the  noise. And this makes it so much harder to work in a distracting, tempting or  annoying environment. And it seems impossible to change.  

It seems like everybody is doing this, right? It’s hard to change our technology  habits, but I want you to think about this. How prevalent was smoking before we  understood the dangers? With increased knowledge about the effects, we have the  choice to reduce our stimulation and become more mindful of how we self-interrupt  to ultimately change our habits. Let’s turn this obstacle around, shall we? I’ve got five  habits to cultivate to increase your focus, but first I wanna take a minute for our  sponsor.  

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All right, let’s talk habits. Good, healthy habits that we can cultivate to increase  our focus so we can stop interrupting our own tasks. And the first habit is own your  space. Part of changing your behavior is making sure that anything that could  distract you isn’t sitting nearby.  

Professor Bill Thornton recently conducted a study at the University of  Southern Maine, and he demonstrated that when performing complex tasks that  require our full attention, just having a phone in the room led to a distraction and  worse performance. And here’s what’s really interesting. It wasn’t the participant’s  phone in the room. It was the researcher’s phone. So even if it isn’t our own phone,  it’s still a distraction. And in that same study, a student having their phone on silent in  a classroom had an equally negative impact on their attention. So if you wanna focus  better, try not bringing your phone with you at all.  

If you’re going to an important meeting, try leaving your phone in the car, or at  work, try leaving your phone in your purse, or in your bag in another room. Make it  much harder to reach for your phone and be distracted by it. Own that space that  you’re in.  

The second habit to cultivate is build your focus muscle. Your mind is basically  a muscle, and similarly, you can build up muscle memory in your brain through a  habitual thought process. Just like a physical muscle, your attention muscle has a  limited amount of strength, and can either atrophy from not being used, or get  stronger from purposeful exercises. Just like strength training, we need to push our  attention limits in an effort to have a longer attention span. And you can increase  your focus strength gradually.  

We’ve talked about time blocking before, and while I typically recommend 30  minute focus blocks, if you’re having a hard time focusing, it’s time to go back to the  basics. Set a timer for just five minutes, and work to complete a task. And when those  five minutes are done, take a break, reward yourself for the few minutes, and then go  back in for another five minutes. When you find that you can easily focus for five  minutes after a day or so, try adding another five minutes to your focus time. Make it  10 minutes, and then add a couple of minutes to your reward in your break time. Over  time, this’ll build a longer block where you’re able to actually get into that  productivity zone. Exercising your brain is just like exercising your body. So let’s be  sure to build up that muscle of focus.  

The third habit I would love for you to cultivate is give your distractions their  own space. Too often we have these random squirrel moments, right, where  something pops in your head and you think, “Ooh, I have to find out right away. I  wonder what the weather will be like tomorrow.” Or, “What movies are playing this  weekend? Do we still have coffee in the coffee pot?” So often we self-interrupt  because we think of these things and we think, “This’ll only take a minute,” and we  stop and we do it right away.  

Instead, what I would encourage you to do is I would encourage you to give  yourself a little space to write down these distractions. Create a random thoughts list  and that will really help you, because the problem is when you get off task, it takes  far too long to get back on task, and that drains our mental energy to check on these  

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“just a minute” thoughts. Instead, whenever something random or short pops in your  head, write it down on your notepad, and then check it when your break time has  arrived, or check it at the end of the day.  

When we think about being productive, we think it means being busy. But to  truly be productive, we need to give our brains a little space to play and explore,  some unstructured time, and this is where your distractions can live. Just make sure  to give that unstructured time a container. Give it a set amount of time so you don’t  fall into the rabbit hole.  

The fourth habit is to put your brain on a break, Ross and Rachel style, you  know, they get back together, they break up, they get together. It’s the same for your  brain. Work for a while, then take a break. Work for a while, then take a break.  Something good you can really do for yourself is start a meditation practice and  become more mindful.  

We talked last season in episode 64 how mindfulness can positively impact  your productivity, and it can also improve your attention span. Research shows that  just 10 minutes of meditation a day will boost your attention, and you’ll even start to  see improvement after just four days. Also try a practice of mindfulness during your  day by simply focusing completely on what you’re doing, slowing down, observing all  the physical and emotional sensations you’re experiencing at a moment.  

Practice this attentive style of living. Being able to be fully present with loved  ones builds your rapport, it builds your trust, and it builds your intimacy with them.  Making the effort to fully focus on them strengthens your concentration at the same  time. So next time you’re talking with someone, put away the phone and listen as  attentively as possible.  

And the fifth habit I want you to cultivate is savor what you enjoy. Read longer  articles and books slowly, intentionally enjoying them. While some studies indicate  that reading digital content has gone up nearly 40%, Slate partnered with a website  analytics company, and they found that only 5% of readers who start an online article  actually finish it. And 38% of readers never actually scroll beyond the first few  paragraphs. Another recent study showed that 25% of Americans didn’t read a single  book in the last year.  

There’s definitely a time and a place for skimming articles or books, but there’s  also so much to learning and enjoyment that’s to be had out of longer books and  articles. Getting lost in a book is a great way to build a longer period of focus. I  wanna challenge you to start paying attention to how you’re spending your time. Do  you allow yourself to have moments of quiet in your brain? Or are you constantly  checking in on your phone, checking in with the media, checking in with what’s going  on everywhere else?  

I want to encourage you to stop self-interrupting and allow yourself the focus  time that you need. I think it will be easy for you to turn this stumbling block into a  starting block. And we’ll be continuing this theme next week when I have Laura  Vanderkam joining me again.  

You may remember Laura joined me couple of seasons ago. She has a brand  new book coming out. I’m so excited to talk to you about it and share a little bit  about that. So look for that episode next week. And the weekender episode this  week, we’re gonna be continuing talking about self-interrupting and giving you some  ideas for how you can self-interrupt a little bit less.  

In the meantime, if you’re enjoying the podcast, and I hope you are, I’d love for  you to leave me a five star rating on iTunes. It’s really easy to do and it takes about  five seconds. And if you have two extra minutes, I would love for you to leave me a  review. It helps other people find my podcast and understand what we’re all about. It  really does mean a lot to me. All right, until next time, have a beautiful and productive  week.  

Thanks for listening to Productivity Paradox from inkWELL Press. To join  Tanya’s free group, simply go to inkwellpress.com/group.