You probably already suspected this about yourself, but if you're anything like the IT workers studied by Gloria Mark, Professor of Informatics at UC Irvine; you shift your focus to a different task on average of every 3 minutes and 5 seconds!
Half of those switches are caused by interruptions. And, what's worse, most of them are you interrupting yourself! i.e. Checking email while you're doing something else.
This seems like a good counterpoint to our last post about Twittering, which is taking off in popularity exactly because it's just the type of thing you can read or post in 3 minutes and 5 seconds!
Other findings reported in the Fast Company interview with researchers:
"We found about 82percent of all interrupted work is resumed on the same day. But here's the bad news -- it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back to the task."
"I argue that when people are switching contexts every 10 and half minutes they can't possibly be thinking deeply. There's no way people can achieve flow. When I write a research article, it takes me a couple of hours before I can even begin to think creatively. If I was switching every 10 and half minutes, there's just no way I'd be able to think deeply about what I'm doing. This is really bad for innovation. When you're on the treadmill like this, it's just not possible to achieve flow."
That's why, from time to time at (W)right On Communications, we shut down our email and close our doors to make the needed time for creativity and strategic thinking.
However, there's an upside to interruptions and multitasking too. Often solutions can come to you when you're thinking about something else. And task shifting gives you the chance to leave a tough problem and incubate it until the right answer or idea pops into your head.
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