Do you ever get the feeling your smartphone is making you less productive? You aren’t alone. More Americans than ever — 77% — now own smar...
You aren’t alone. More Americans than ever — 77% — now own smartphones, and studies show they are killing our ability to focus. The devices are distracting us to death, affecting our ability to work and decreasing the number and value of face-to-face connections we have.
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But smartphones are becoming an increasing problem in the workplace. Workers themselves said the they’re the No. 1 reason for interruptions at work, according to a survey released by jobs site CareerBuilder last year, but they’re reluctant to give them up during office hours. In the same survey, only 10% of respondents said they negatively impacted their productivity. However, smartphones at work do just that, a separate 2016 study by researchers at the Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg in Germany and Nottingham-Trent University in the U.K. concluded.
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It’s not hard to break the spell, though, according to research from psychologist Larry Rosen and neuroscientist Adam Gazzaley. Their new book, “The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High-Tech World,” talks about effective strategies to decrease those distractions and their side effects. We talked to Rosen about how to take better breaks at work, connect more with our loved ones, and escape our iPhone addictions.
MarketWatch:What are some ancient aspects of our brain that don’t fit into our current environment?
Larry Rosen: Our brains are not all that different from what they were in the caveman days, and we are inundated by constant technology everywhere. It appears our brains were not built for handling that much distraction in our world — we aren’t very good at focusing and attending anymore. Part of what we do in the book is talk about the different ways you get distracted both from inside your brain and the outside world—and offer suggestions to get a better sense of focus in attention both from your body and your psychology.
MarketWatch: What are the biggest distractions at work?
Rosen: Technology, particularly communication technology, is the No. 1 distraction in almost all studies — it’s the one that creates the interruption. About half of interruptions we get are from the outside, most often an email message or chat messages. The other half of the interruptions come from inside our brain. They are often caused because we are feeling a need to stay constantly connected so we need to check in often.
We know that people check in every 15 minutes or less and, as soon as they check in it will take upwards of 20 minutes to return to the task they were working on. It doesn’t mean the work is not productive, but if you stop what you’re working on immediately and come back to it 20 minutes later you have to activate all the areas you were using. That project is now going to take you longer to finish and because you are constantly interrupted there will be more stress and anxiety involved.
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MarketWatch: So how do we fix these distractions?
‘We know from neuroscience there are different things that can reduce activity in your brain, like walking in nature for 10 minutes, exercising for 10 minutes, meditating for 10 minutes, or taking a hot shower.’
- Larry Rosen, co-author of ‘The Distracted Mind.’
Rosen: Every 90 minutes, you need to take a break. Technology is inundating all of our sensory levels and our brains become tired. What you want to do is to take a break to calm your brain activity. We know from neuroscience there are different things that can reduce activity in your brain, like walking in nature for 10 minutes, exercising for 10 minutes, meditating for 10 minutes, or taking a hot shower. There is an infinite number of ways to calm the brain, but everyone knows intuitively what works for them.
• Alert everyone you are trying a new system and you only check your messages on the half hour.
• If you’re working on a computer, close Facebook, email, and any other place you might receive communications.
• If you have your phone there (surely you do), turn it on silent, turn it upside down, and set an alarm for 30 minutes.
• Turn your phone on vibrate and set a certain vibration for important people like your boss, or only let certain messages through from certain people on ‘Do Not Disturb’ mode.
• Check your phone on a schedule and not at a moment’s notice.
MarketWatch: What are some measures people can take outside the office to increase productivity at work?
Rosen: We need to be emotionally and psychologically healthy. You need to create technology-free zones in your life where you allow contemplative time for yourself or if others are involved, face to face communications. Remember, we have gotten here slowly over time, it’s taken us a decade to slip into these bad habits. We are not the ones who are at fault totally, but the technology is developed to take your attention away from you.
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