Distracted? Work Harder!
Trouble focusing could just mean that your work isn’t complex enough, and that there isn’t enough of it.
By Chris Bailey
Mr. Bailey is a productivity consultant.
When
it comes to focusing at work, there is no shortage of scapegoats to
blame for our wandering minds. Social media, the ever-churning news
cycle, chats with colleagues — these distractions can lead to a working
state of mind that is far from focused. But there’s one possible cause
of frequent distraction we don’t often consider: Our work isn’t complex
enough, and there isn’t enough of it.
This
idea isn’t a popular one, especially with those who feel they’re
already working at capacity. That’s a growing number of us these days,
when busyness — at work and at home — is seen as a kind of status
symbol. But this busyness is often a guise for something else: We
procrastinate by doing mindless, distracting tasks that make us feel
productive, but in reality accomplish little.
Can you change this innate human behavior? Yes, but you may need to take on more work, and work on stuff that’s a little harder.
Complex
tasks demand more of our working memory and attention, meaning we have
less mental capacity remaining to wander to the nearest stimulating
distraction. In his book “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience,”
the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi argues that we’re most likely
to enter into that state of total work immersion when the challenge of
completing a task is roughly equal to our ability to complete it. We get
bored when our skills greatly exceed the demands of our work — such as
when we do mindless data entry for several hours. And we feel anxious
when the demands of a task exceed our skills — as when we’re unprepared
to give a presentation. Understanding your skill level and skill set,
and pairing those abilities with a worthy task, will make you more
likely to be fully engaged in your work.
Consciously
taking on a greater number of complex projects is a powerful way to
enter a mental state I call hyperfocus — an attentional mode in which
one task consumes your complete attention. Your mind wanders less often
in hyperfocus because you’re more engaged. That means you’re also more
productive.
Besides questioning the
complexity of individual tasks, it’s worth reflecting on whether you
have enough work to do in general. If not, you’re inviting distraction.
Think
back to your last tight deadline. Did that timeline offer the luxury of
tending to unproductive distractions like scanning the news and
refreshing Twitter? Probably not. Yet, on nondeadline days, it can feel
impossible to focus on the task at hand.
In productivity circles, this phenomenon is known as Parkinson’s law. The idea is
that our workload tends to expand to fit the time available for its
completion. Small tasks that should take two hours to complete will take
an entire workday if we have that time available. Distractions are to
blame for this time trap.
The
research surrounding attention suggests that our minds are biologically
wired to focus on anything that’s novel, pleasurable or threatening —
and distractions can be an enticing cocktail of all three. This is one
of the reasons I recommend taming distractions in advance, and there are
many tactics and tools to help you do this: downloading a
distraction-blocking application for your computer, putting your phone
in Do Not Disturb mode or just leaving it in another room can help.
Once
we’ve removed distractions, we’re forced to face our work — and it’s
often only then that we discover how much, or how little, we truly have
on our plate. One hour spent hyperfocusing distraction-free can be worth
an entire afternoon of distracted work.
Since
I am a productivity expert, some assume I’ve mastered distraction. This
couldn’t be further from the truth. A few years ago, I finished writing
an 80,000-word manuscript on a tight deadline. But after I handed it
in, I continued to be just as busy, even though I had substantially less
work.
My remaining projects expanded to fit the time I had available. I
logged into my social media accounts when I should have been working. I
checked new emails constantly. And I agreed to attend meetings I didn’t
need to be a part of in the first place. I felt guilty when I wasn’t
busy, and I alleviated this guilt by filling my time with busywork.
Later
I realized this guilt came from the fact that I was working without
intent. Intention is the key to productivity — when we have more to do
than time to do it in, choosing what we do ahead of time becomes
essential. Once I’d tamed the busywork, I realized there was still space
for meaningful work, and I took on more complex tasks, including
thinking about the book that inspired this article.
Here’s
an exercise: Take a few days to assess roughly how much of your time
you spend on unproductive busywork, and how difficult it is to become
engaged in individual projects. At the same time, reflect on your energy
levels. Busywork can be a sign you need a rest; when your mental
stamina is low, your mind gravitates to the easiest thing on your plate.
But if you’re still falling victim
to distraction, consider the possibility that you might need to work
harder — and smarter — on projects that will both fill your days and
enrich your life.
Chris Bailey is the author of the forthcoming “Hyperfocus: How to Be More Productive in a World of Distraction,” from which this essay is adapted.
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A version of this article appears in print on , on Page SR10 of the New York edition with the headline: Distracted? Work Harder!. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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