Man, Interrupted — The High Cost of Distractions

Emails, DMs, texts, drive-by’s. What — ten, maybe fifteen times a day? JFC! Ain’t nobody got time for that!

The cost of losing focus is about 25 minutes per interruption. Multiply that by ten or fifteen interruptions and you’re losing four to six hours a day in productivity; not to mention the length of the interruption itself.

And I didn’t make this stuff up. Multiple academics have studied how long it takes to return to your original task after an interruption. It turns out Gloria Mark from the University of California, Irvine is the Original G on this topic. She says these distractions not only ruin your focus and mental progress, but they also have negative emotional effects. They often lead to higher stress and bad moods.

Sure, Gloria notes half of our daily interruptions are self-inflicted; and it’s just more time wasted — it’s keeping us from our best thinking.

Anyway, I know I’m not alone, but it’s only recently I’ve learned of the true cost of these distractions. It explains much of why getting and keeping flow is so difficult.