The vibration of your mobile phone calendar reminds you of your 11 am conference call. Dots flashing on your Fitbit guilting you to get in your steps at lunchtime. Aural and visual radiators on your desktop alerting you to additions to your inbox, changes made to Dropbox, and yet another message.
Ubiquitous numerical displays incessantly signal friend requests, status changes, and other social media updates that, in both Pavlovian and FOMO fashion, condition you to keep myriad tabs open responding as they beckon.
So what about that otherwise simple “five-minute memo” you sat down to compose almost an hour ago? Given all the distractions you’ve already had to contend with you’re now 47 minutes in and have but two intelligible lines are written.
A Word on Distractions
For better or for worse, our brains are hardwired to respond when something new is introduced into an otherwise stable environment. Optimized to minimize risk and maximize reward, the brain is primed to detect, remember, and ascertain what type of outcome the seemingly unfamiliar will provide.
It’s not simply technology that is responsible for our distractions. Human interruptions are also a factor, as are cognitive ones like lack of clarity, self-doubt, and fear, all of which can invite procrastination.
There are likewise more stealthy interruptions - the “neural noise” we try but seldom succeed at suppressing: the aircon set too high or too low, the aroma of freshly-baked cinnamon buns beckoning from the break room, triggering a rumble in our stomach, stimulating our salivary glands, compelling us to drop what we are doing mid-task and tend to this newly-realized "need" at once.
Any deviation in our environment or our expectation of something within our environment can compromise focus. To include noticing our colleague in the adjoining office now sports a fresh-coating of jet black hair where little - very little - existed yesterday. In and of itself, acknowledging and responding to the unfamiliar or unexpected is not necessarily a bad thing.
After all, exploration of the new is how we learn and, perhaps more importantly, how we were able to survive as a species. Detecting an atypical smell, a sudden rustle of leaves, or the slinking of a shadow where one previously did not exist kept prehistoric man from succumbing to his predators. What does prove problematic about novelty in the context of knowledge work is when it compels us to shift our attention mid-task, naively anticipating a smooth return to the task we first shifted our attention from.
Context Switching
We live in an era where wending our way through the daily deluge of digital distractions has become synonymous with how knowledge workers function. When pulses, pings and pop-ups jockey for our attention and task-switching (also known as context-switching) typifies the way we’ve come to work, it’s a wonder our already drunk-monkey minds are capable of completing any of the things we’ve begun. Let alone complete them thoughtfully, and with quality.
We have a tendency to shift from one unfinished task to another without any correlation between them. Spilling your attention all over the place and calling it multitasking neither works for you, nor for your team’s efficiency. The problem with context switching at work is that we are unable to stay focused on a particular task entirely. In addition to that, it reflects on our performance and overall productivity.
Task-switching begets more task-switching - not completion. This is often attributed to “the Zeigarnik Effect. A phenomenon in which information and tasks left incomplete don’t leave our minds. Instead, we dwell on those incomplete tasks, and those intrusive thoughts render us vulnerable to distractions.
The energy that consumes - the metabolism task-switching requires - drains our cognitive capacity, causing frustration, burnout, impeding focus, and inviting error and rework, preventing us from realizing our optimal potential. When we task-switch we break our flow state. And you can’t achieve flow without a healthy constraint.
Now, where was I? Anyone who has found themselves asking this question while reading the same page over and over upon returning from a distraction knows there is seldom a seamless transition when shifting gears, especially when dealing with high-cognitive tasks that are dissimilar in size and/or type.
As is evidenced by the proliferation of scholarship in cognitive science, neuro performance, and the growing sub-field of “interruption science,” task-switching has reached epic proportions in the 21st Century workplace, the negative effects of which can not be overstated. Unfortunately, the impacts of this executive function are often underestimated. It’s like my grandmother used to say: “Just because you can do it, doesn’t mean you should do it.”
In an ideal world there won’t be any task-switching but here in reality it is inevitable. Also, it is harmful to our concentration. With that being said, you need to evaluate when you tend to switch context and look for opportunities to reduce it by sorting your priorities.
The Science behind Instant Gratification
Instant gratification refers to receiving less but immediate benefits instead of waiting for better ones in the future. We live in times when we can get almost everything we want anytime and anywhere we want it. As a result, we become more impatient and distracted. Moreover, our ability to stay focused on a big project in the long term is doomed.
A great example of instant and delayed gratification is the well-known Marshmallow Experiment. In the 1960s the psychologist Walter Mischel conducted a study on childhood self-control. He gave the children a choice - eat one marshmallow now or wait and get two later. Turns out more kids than adults can resist the instant gratification urge. In a follow-up study, it is reported that the children who waited for the second marshmallow had better self-control when they became adults.
Self-control is a very powerful source that can take your productivity and performance far. To stay focused on what’s important, you need to look at the big picture. Most important, be aware of your urges to instant gratitude. You can train your brain by purposely delaying acting on them.
Hack Your Brain & Stay Focused
When it comes to optimal processing speed, the brain processes high-cognitive tasks sequentially - one thing at a time, one after the other - rather than in parallel. When there is a disruption in that workflow, we incur not just a carry-over cost from the first task, but a ramp-up cost for the second. The more complex the task, the more our cognitive ability is degraded, the more processing speed and quality we sacrifice in the shift, setting off a cycle that is nothing if not vicious.
Enter Personal Kanban
Limiting WIP
Limiting work in process (WIP), the second of Personal Kanban’s two rules, enables the flow-state we mentioned. Work in process, also known as work in progress, is the amount of work we have ongoing at the moment. When we don’t limit our WIP we are more susceptible to the immediate gratification we get from responding to a distraction.
WIP limits encourage you to stay focused on a single task and complete it more efficiently. In addition to that, it can help you identify bottlenecks. Limiting WIP reflects on the quality of your work performance.
In the absence of Personal Kanban's first rule visualize your work, the penalty for taking on that new task without completing tasks already in flight is never made explicit, and so we continue to overtax our “system of production,” our brains.
Visualize Your Work
Visualizing work and limiting WIP compels us to stay focused on and complete our priorities, and complete them with quality. And that completion comes with its own reward. The brain thrives on completion; accomplishing a goal literally feels good.
“If you can’t see it, you can’t manage it.” Visualization helps us to better understand the workflow and manage it effectively. A Kanban board gives you a visual representation of your tasks and their status. It helps you stay focused on the current workload. In addition, you can spot potential issues in your process and prevent them in the future.
Final Thoughts
A study posits that a chemical reaction in the brain occurs when we so much as say the word “done” upon completing a task, no matter the task’s size. When we achieve a goal or overcome a challenge, dopamine - the neurotransmitter that regulates the brain's pleasure center - is triggered, leaving us calm, confident, and focused. And let's face it - those feelings can be addictive. We are then primed for another "hit" of dopamine, inclined to repeat the behavior that triggered the dopamine reward in the first place and so anticipating the pleasure that comes with completion sets into motion a virtuous cycle.
To be sure, interruptions are the nature of the beast when it comes to knowledge work because the “gemba” - the metaphorical workshop where we create value - is in our heads.
So the next time you need to drown out the cacophony of social and aural and visual and neural noise from your colleagues and your phones and your monkey minds simply to get that five-minute memo off your plate, remember how a boost of dopamine dulls the allure of even the shiniest of squirrels.
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