Focus and distractions
by Celine Roque
Beeping, ringing, flashing – it seems our tech tools distract us at every opportunity (or rather, we let them distract us). David McCandless attempted to find a method to the madness by observing how each of them capture his attention, and sorting them according to his priorities. That is, assuming they all occur simultaneously, which ones will he be more likely to attend to? The results were presented in a triangular graphic on his blog which he called The Hierarchy of Digital Distractions.
He noticed that receiving messages from Facebook and other social networking sites would quickly make him stop working just to read them. However, if he gets a Skype or landline call, Facebook takes a backseat. In the middle of a call, Twitter messages, important emails (mass redundancies?), and text messages were likely divert his attention. If anything is happening on his iPhone, he can’t stop himself from checking it. Of course, all these grind to a screeching halt when any of his devices fail, consuming most of his energies trying to fix it.
Not everyone will behave in the same way. For some, their guilty pleasures are Youtube, Wikipedia, RSS, StumbleUpon, or Digg. Others are hooked on their portable media players or gaming consoles (I’ve seen many bring theirs to the office). Whatever your favorite distractions are, if you’re serious about taming them, being aware of how they affect you is paramount. Someone pointed out the difference between urgent vs important. Time-sensitive tasks like answering a phone call is urgent, but it’s not always important. If you have caller ID, you can check who’s calling at a glance and return to work if it’s not anyone you know (or someone you’re avoiding). The trick is to stay calm when the beeps and rings start. Stand by your real priorities.
Managers deal with distracted employees everyday. Studying why some things are more distracting than others could give them an insight to what can be done to minimize their effects and increase office productivity.
Thought...
