Why Distractions are More Dangerous than Interruptions
Distractions are the №1 problem preventing us from doing the things we know we should be doing. Many people confuse distractions with interruptions. Here we will show that they are similar but different and we will see why distractions are the bigger problem.
1. Why Are We Having Such a Big Problem with Distraction?
Unfortunately, the human brain is hardwired to get distracted. Our brain’s alert system is programmed to respond to anything that is:
● Pleasurable, or
● harmful, and
● unknown.
In terms of our evolution, this makes sense. Instead of focusing on tasks like cooking a meal, our ancestors were distracted by threats, for example an approaching elephant. This diversion of attention was good for their survival and that is why nature evolved our brain to become easily distracted.
However, in today’s world we no longer face the same threats that would need us to respond instantly. On the other hand, it is more and more important to cut out distractions and work for an extended period of time on our most important tasks. This is why the tendency of our brain to get easily distracted no longer makes sense and we need strategies to overcome it.
2. Distinction Between Interruptions and Distractions
When we talk about distractions we need to be careful not to confuse them with interruptions. A distraction happens when a stimulus leads us to stop our productive work, without any outside pressure. An interruption on the other hand, is when an outside force prevents us from continuing our productive work. So distractions are internal and voluntary while interruptions are external and involuntary.
Let us illustrate distractions and interruptions with a couple of examples.
Examples of distractions:
● Look through Instagram/TikTok/Facebook
● Checking emails
● Watching the news
● Doing meaningless tasks
Examples of interruptions:
Having to stop your important work due to:
● Work meetings
● Calls by colleagues
● Your children asking for help
We can graphically visualize the difference between distractions and interruptions as follows:
Distraction
Interruption
The above graphics show that, in an interruption, our external environment forces us to discontinue our work for some time.
In a distraction we are not forced to disrupt our work but go off-track ourselves till we get back to what we were working on before.
Many authors on productivity confuse the concepts of distractions and interruptions. This is understandable as their nature and their effect on productivity is quite similar, and sometimes it is indeed difficult to distinguish between the two.
However, there are important differences in how to deal with the two, as interruptions require that you control the external environment, while distractions require that you control yourself.
3. Why Distractions Are So Tricky to Deal With?
When comparing distractions and interruptions most people tend to think that interruptions are more difficult to deal with. This is because interruptions are external forces that often oblige us to stop our work. On the other hand distractions are internal forces that do not oblige us to stop but merely lure us away from important work. So it would seem that outside forces (interruptions) are more difficult to control than our own mind (distractions). But in fact, distractions are more tricky to deal with!
Also, when comparing the extent to which interruptions and distractions affect the productivity of knowledge workers, we can see that especially for remote workers and for people that are working as self employed, distractions have a much bigger impact on their work than interruptions. This is because we are more prone to get distracted when we are working in an environment without much external control, as when we are our own boss and working from our home office.
There are several additional reasons why distractions are becoming more and more of a problem for knowledge workers, which we will look at below. This analysis is important because we need to increase our awareness of what exactly leads us to get distracted.
3.1. Work and distraction on same device
25 years ago our distractions came mainly from newspapers, TV, and radio. There was still no social media, no online video, and the Internet was just starting. Also, we worked offline, using books, and paper reports, rather than working online. That meant that the source of the distraction was on a different device from that used for our work. So when you wanted to get distracted from a work report you were working on, you had to put it away and turn on the TV, the radio or open a newspaper.
Nowadays, almost all our work is done online, via the computer or mobile phone, and at the same time almost all distractions happen online. So we are using the same devices for both productive work and distractions, and thus while we are working distractions are only one click away.
Moreover, many of the sources of distraction like LinkedIn and YouTube, we also need to use for work. So we are not even able to block an app because we would not be able to do our work.
Moreover, our mobile phone is with us for the majority of the day; for some people that sleep next to their mobile phone it is literally with them 24/7. That means that the major source of distraction, the mobile phone, is continuously available.
All of this makes distractions extremely tricky to deal with. 25 years ago we could prevent ourselves from becoming distracted by TV by just not having a TV at our place of work. And even if there was a TV at the place of our work, we needed to switch on a different device. These small barriers prevented us from diverting our focus. Nowadays, these barriers are no longer present as everything is available within one click while we are working, so that we are naturally more prone to be distracted.
3.2. Some distractions seem useful
Another reason for the distraction being difficult to deal with is that they have some value, or at least so it seems like.
For example, during the last presidential campaign between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, a large percentage of the American population was consuming the news on the presidential race for more than an hour per day. The difficulty with this kind of distraction is that a person can argue that being informed about politics and current affairs is something that is important for him and for society at large.
On the other hand, watching a soap opera is clearly of little benefit. So we are aware that time spent watching a soap opera is not being spent productively. Therefore, it is easier to deal with an addiction to soap operas than to deal with an addiction to the news, as we can always justify that watching news is actually somewhat good, and therefore should be permitted.
3.3. Companies lure us with click baits
Another reason why today’s distractions coming from online media are so difficult to deal with is because the companies producing these distractions have become really good at making them irresistible. This is because the success of the companies depends on how much they are able to capture your interest for their content; the better they capture your interest, the more revenue they make.
Therefore, social media companies like YouTube, Facebook and Instagram have complex algorithms that take into account what kind of content you have consumed in the past to determine which content is the most likely to make you click and thereby get you distracted; and of course they will only show you this kind of content.
3.4. Tired brain
We are most susceptible to becoming victims of distractions in case our brain is tired. Unfortunately, our modern way of working has led to our brains often being in a state of severe tiredness. This is due to two main reasons:
1. We work too much and rest too little.
2. Our brain gets exposed to too much information, much more information that it had to deal with at any point in our evolutionary history. This information overload leads our brain to become tired.
Our brain being tired leads us to want to do small, unimportant tasks, but not get into a state of productive work and makes us much more susceptible to distractions.
For all of the above reasons, distractions are extremely difficult to get under control. This is especially true in case you do not have a supervisor because you are a contractor and thus your own boss, are the founder of your company or are working remotely without close supervision. In all those cases you have more freedom but this also means more potential to get distracted.
There are several ways to overcome distractions. Here we show you how:
