Can I Have Your Attention?. Steinhorst Curt

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      It costs your people time. A study from the University of Michigan revealed that multitasking results in a 40 percent drop in efficiency.17 That's more than three hours each workday. All the while, your people stress over not having enough time for their responsibilities.

      It costs them quality. In a fascinating study, Dr. Harold Pashler of the University of California at San Diego tested the production of Harvard MBAs. When he added a second, basic task to their workload, their performances dropped to the level of an 8-year-old.18 Of course, the natural conclusion to all this is either help sharpen your employees' focus or save money by hiring second-graders.

      It robs them of creativity. In the face of information overload, we fail to store new ideas in long-term memory. That means forgetting anniversaries and, more seriously, jeopardizing our creative thinking (though, come to think of it, I'm not sure anything is more serious than forgetting your anniversary). The magic happens when we connect ideas already in our brains that were never connected before. The more we can pull from memory, the more connections our brains can make. Voilà– creativity. Without the space to process or connect, your people can become virtual mockingbirds. They figuratively (and sometimes literally) retweet the hottest new ideas, but none of it gets stored on their mental hard drives. This means less material for later connections, which means less creative and critical thinking.

      It erases meaning and purpose. Employees need time to consider the significance of their work. Engagement springs from the gaps that help us understand the “why” behind our endeavors. But there simply isn't space for purposeful reflection when your people jump from e-mail to meetings to texts to tweets to podcasts to sports updates – and finally to the pillow.

      The ultimate cost is unhappy, burned-out employees who further retreat to their devices for escape or connection with people who also feel stuck at work.

The Problem

      In the words of Henry David Thoreau, “Men have become the tools of their tools.” We have lost control of our ability to choose where we spend our attention and instead become slaves of distraction. But there is a way out. Over the rest of this book, I break down the complex and systemic problem of distraction step by step and apply tangible, proven solutions that can be used in any workplace. To get on top of it, you have to rethink the following areas.

       Communication

      Consider the number of ways you can be reached, how you communicate with your people, and the interruptions that result. Is e-mail the one place for everything? Can we reduce inbox clutter? Does texting and messaging interfere or help? Would shorter meetings be more effective? Should we put phones and laptops aside, or keep them at the ready? Can conflict ever be handled digitally, or should it always be face to face?

       Technology

      Are you providing helpful technology or needless distractions for your people? Can they access key information, or does it get lost in the shuffle? (A friend at a major consulting firm once told me they estimated that 95 percent of operations and research writing goes unread by everyone but those who produced it.) Do you use productivity software? A Web search of “to do list apps” brings 1.3 billion results. Are any of them helpful, or does the learning curve sap the very resources they're meant to preserve?

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      1

      Lulu Chang, “Americans Spend an Alarming Amount of Time Checking Social Media on Their Phones,” Digital Trends, updated June 13, 2015, http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/informate-report-social-media-smartphone-use/.

      2

      “Growth of Time Spent on Mobile Devices Slows,” eMarketer, October 7, 2015,

1

Lulu Chang, “Americans Spend an Alarming Amount of Time Checking Social Media on Their Phones,” Digital Trends, updated June 13, 2015, http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/informate-report-social-media-smartphone-use/.

2

“Growth of Time Spent on Mobile Devices Slows,” eMarketer, October 7, 2015, https://www.emarketer.com/Article/Growth-of-Time-Spent-on-Mobile-Devices-Slows/1013072.

3

Alex Cocotas, “88 % of U.S. Consumers Use Mobile as Second Screen While Watching TV,” Business Insider, May 20, 2013, http://www.businessinsider.com/a-majority-uses-mobile-as-second-screen-2013-5.

4

“The Shape of Email,” Mimecast, October 2012, http://www.tbline.nl/index_htm_files/Mimecast-WP-Shape-of-Email-Report-Consumer.pdf.

5

Brigid Schulte, “Work Interruptions Can Cost You 6 Hours a Day. An Efficiency Expert Explains How to Avoid Them,” The Washington Post, June 1, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2015/06/01/interruptions-at-work-can-cost-you-up-to-6-hours-a-day-heres-how-to-avoid-them/?utm_term=.a12d4f6d9e9e.

6

Schulte, “Work Interruptions.”

7

Bryan College, “How Are Multitasking Millennials Impacting Today's Workplace?” accessed April 28, 2017, http://www.bryan.edu/news/multitasking-at-work.

8

Kris Duggan, “Feeling Distracted by Politics? 29 % of Employees Are Less Productive after U.S. Election,” BetterWorks, February 7, 2017, https://blog.betterworks.com/feeling-distracted-politics-29-employees-less-productive-u-s-election/.

9

Juline E. Mills, Bo Hu, Srikanth Beldona, and Joan Clay, “Cyberslacking! A Wired-Workplace Liability Issue,” The Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly, 42, no. 5 (2001): 34–47, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010880401800562.

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