A supervisor of mine called me in for an annual performance review several years ago. He asked me what I thought was my greatest personal obstacle at work. I quickly said that I found it difficult and time-consuming to switch from one thing to the next.

Today, while Googling for help with something in Excel for my work, I saw a video ad on YouTube noting that if you tap someone on the shoulder while they're working, it takes 23 minutes before they can refocus on their work. I found this curious, and thought I'd circle back to it once I had some code running on its own for my research work. Here's what I found during my planned break from work:

This remark is ultimately based on a 2008 study done in Florence, Italy (Link Below) . Upon a quick scan of the article, I see that interruptions were studied both when the interruption was related to the work at hand versus when they were not. Result? No difference in quality of work. But, we compensate for interruptions by working faster, and this creates more stress and frustration for us.

With more than 500 citations for this paper, I'll scour newer works related to this subject and see what more I can learn about how to manage my refocusing efforts. I have a personal/professional interest in this as psychology was one of a handful of majors I seriously considered when I started college. (I didn't know beforehand that college students had to ultimately choose a major! What do you expect? I grew up in the middle of nowhere. Ah, but this is an entirely different set of stories, let me refocus . . .)

I find interruptions by others difficult to recover from, but if I break up my own work -- manage my own time -- I am more productive. During COVID lockdowns, however, I overworked myself largely because I didn't take the breaks I needed. As a scientist and engineer, it's very easy to dig too deep into an idea or task and miss something important (often, absurdly silly mistakes) along the way that you realize only after a self-inflicted break from the problem. I could stare at a screen or work in the lab for hours happily doing my work, but taking a self-inflicted break from it helps me discover ways to actually make my work easier, more productive, and less prone to mistakes. Being interrupted by others, however, requires a different recovery strategy. It has always taken longer to recover.

What about you? What do you do to refocus your attention after being interrupted?

LINK: "The cost of interrupted work: more speed and stress," (free pdf linked on site) The_cost_of_interrupted_work_More_speed_and_stress