Technology And Analytics

Conquering Digital Distraction

by Larry Rosen and Alexandra Samuel
From the Magazine (June 2015)

Summary. Many people today regard their computers, tablets, and smartphones
as indispensable, both professionally and personally. But they can also be
dangerous: Research shows that spending too much time on e-mail and social
media reduces your... more

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Digital overload may be the
defining problem of today’s
workplace. All day and night, on
desktops, laptops, tablets, and
smartphones, we’re bombarded
with so many messages and
alerts that even when we want to
focus, it’s nearly impossible. And
when we’re tempted to
procrastinate, diversions are
only a click away.

This culture of constant

connection takes a toll both
professionally and personally.
Sinan Koçaslan/iStockphoto We waste time, attention, and
energy on relatively unimportant information and interactions,
staying busy but producing little of value. As the late Clifford Nass
and his colleagues at Stanford University have shown, people who
regularly juggle several streams of content do not pay attention,
memorize, or manage their tasks as well as those who focus on
one thing at a time. The result is reduced productivity and
engagement, both in the office and at home. The Information
Overload Research Group, a nonprofit consortium of business
professionals, researchers, and consultants, reports that
knowledge workers in the United States waste 25% of their time
dealing with their huge and growing data streams, costing the
economy $997 billion annually.
Most people agree on the
FURTHER READING
solution: Control the digital
Make
MattersTime for the Work That overload rather than letting it
Feature by Julian Birkinshaw control you. But how, exactly,
and Jordan Cohen
does one do that? We asked two
It’s easier said than done. experts: Larry Rosen, a
psychologist, and Alexandra
Samuel, a technologist. We
suspected that their disparate
backgrounds would lead them to offer dramatically different
advice, and we were right. Rosen believes that we should
systematically turn away from the information stream and focus
on more energy-enhancing activities. Samuel argues that the best
way to fight digital distraction is with the strategic use of digital
tools. Taken together, their solutions offer a useful primer on how
we can begin to tackle this huge and growing challenge.

Take a Break
by Larry Rosen

Marco, a 38-year-old manager at an educational app company,

used to start every day with his smartphone, checking it and
replying to messages before getting out of bed. Over breakfast he
read news on his CNN app, and even when driving to work, he
couldn’t resist looking at his phone. At the office he was so
distracted by incoming e-mails and texts that he had trouble
completing important tasks, and colleagues grumbled about his
failure to engage in meetings. Evenings at home were spent on his
phone or laptop instead of interacting with his wife and kids.
Marco confessed all this to me after I spoke at his children’s
school, and then he asked if I could help him change his habits. I
assured him that I could, and that he wasn’t alone.

Use behavioral principles to wean

yourself from your digital devices.

For the past few years, psychologists have been examining the
recent dramatic changes in humans’ relationship to technology.
Consider a study that colleagues and I conducted in 2008 and
replicated last year. We gave people in three age groups—Baby
Boomers, Generation X, and the Net Generation (born in the
1980s)—a list of 66 pairs of activities to find out which ones they
typically did in tandem. Questions included, for example, “Do you
go online and text simultaneously?” and “Do you e-mail and eat at
the same time?” In 2008, Baby Boomers responded yes for 59% of
the pairs, on average; the numbers were 67% for Gen Xers and 75%
for the Net Gen. In 2014 the percentages were higher—67% for
Baby Boomers, 70% for Gen X, and 81% for the Net Gen.
Meanwhile, members of the iGeneration (born in the 1990s),
whom we added to the second study, were engaging in an
astonishing 87% of the paired activities, even when they found
one in the pair difficult all by itself.

Unfortunately, the evidence shows that multitasking isn’t always

successful: Doing two things well at the same time is possible only
when at least one task is automatic. So, yes, you can walk and
chew gum simultaneously. But check e-mail while participating
in a conference call? Look at your Facebook feed and still do
meaningful work? Researchers have demonstrated that the mere
presence of a phone makes people less productive and less
trusting, and that students who are interrupted while studying
take longer to learn the material and feel more stressed. Gloria
Mark, of the University of California, Irvine, has shown that
workers typically attend to a task for about three minutes before
switching to something else (usually an electronic
communication) and that it takes about 20 minutes to return to
the previous task.

Why are we allowing ourselves to be so debilitated by

technological distractions? Some people refer to the overuse of
digital devices as an addiction. But since most of us don’t appear
to gain much pleasure from the behavior—a defining feature of
addiction—I wouldn’t classify it as such. More accurate are terms
such as FOMO (fear of missing out), FOBO (fear of being offline),
and nomophobia (fear of being out of mobile phone contact)—all
forms of anxiety that border on obsession or compulsion. People
are constantly checking their laptops, tablets, and phones
because they worry about receiving new information after
everyone else, responding too slowly to a text or an e-mail, or
being late to comment on or like a social media post.

Numerous studies support this diagnosis of the problem. In my

lab we’ve found that many people, regardless of age, check their
smartphones every 15 minutes or less and become anxious if they
aren’t allowed to do so. My colleague Nancy Cheever brought 163
students into a lecture hall, asked them to sit without talking,
doing work, or using their phones, and then assessed their anxiety
over the next hour. Although light smartphone users showed no
change, moderate users experienced initial alarm that leveled off,
and those accustomed to checking their phones all day long felt
their anxiety spike immediately and continue to increase.
How do we calm the anxiety and thereby avoid the distraction?
When I speak to students, parents, teachers, and business leaders,
I recommend three strategies—all of which involve turning away
from technology at times to regain focus.

First, use behavioral principles to wean yourself from your digital

devices. Allow yourself to check all modes of e-communication,
but then shut everything down and silence your phone. Set an
alarm for 15 minutes, and when it rings give yourself one minute
for a tech check-in. Repeat this process until you are comfortable
increasing your off-grid time to an hour or several hours.

A second strategy is inspired by the research of Nathaniel

Kleitman, who established that our brains work in 90-minute
rest-activity cycles not only when we sleep but also when we’re
awake. So you should take a recharging break every hour and a
half, especially if you’re multitasking with technology, which
makes the brain overly active. Even a 10-minute walk in nature is
enough to have a calming effect. You might also listen to music,
look at art, exercise, or meditate.

Try it yourself! 

Download these exercises for fighting distraction.

Finally, keep technology out of your bedroom. The
National Sleep Foundation (NSF) and Mayo Clinic have noted that
the use of blue-light-emitting LED devices is detrimental to your
sleep—a critical period that cements what you learned during the
day, while removing useless information and the toxic byproducts
of daily neuronal activities. NSF recommends that you abstain
from viewing digital material for one hour before bedtime, while
Mayo Clinic suggests dimming screens used at night, keeping
them 14 inches from your face, and removing them from the room
when you’re ready to sleep. The aim is to block the release of
neurotransmitters that energize your brain and instead promote
the production of melatonin, which allows you to rest.

I persuaded Marco to periodically disconnect and, when using

technology, take recharging breaks. He started going for short
walks outside his office and putting his phone in a kitchen drawer
at night. Within a month he was able to ignore his devices for half-
hour intervals, and he felt happier and more energetic, as well as
more attentive and productive.

Although we turn to technology to soothe our anxieties,

overdosing on it just exacerbates them. To break the cycle, we
must limit the use of our devices. Only then can we regain our
ability to focus.

Fight Fire with Fire

by Alexandra Samuel

Given all the ways that technology imposes demands on our time,
we forget that digital tools are actually supposed to make our lives
easier. And used correctly, they can. From my two decades
researching how people use technology, I’ve learned that it’s not
only possible to fight fire with fire—it’s essential.

“Turning off” is simply not a tenable solution in the digital age;

with so much work, communication, and socializing taking place
on screens, few of us can afford to be off-line for significant
portions of the workday (or even evenings and weekends). A
recent survey by Tata Communications showed that people in the
U.S., Europe, and Asia spend an average of more than five hours a
day on the internet, and 64% worry when they don’t have access.
Tiffany Sauder, the founder and president of Element Three, a
branding and marketing agency, knows the challenge that always-
on connectivity poses for an executive in a growing business.
After enjoying breakout success in 2011 and landing a retainer
arrangement with a large client, she was ready to create a stronger
public identity for the company and herself. She knew she needed
to start using Twitter, but developing a social media presence felt
like a big job for someone who was already overwhelmed by the
messages flying at her each day. “E-mail was a nightmare,” she
says. “It felt like I worked for my in-box and not for myself.”
Technology wasn’t Tiffany’s
FURTHER READING
Work Smarter
with Social Media
problem; her use of it was. Like
many executives I see, she
Book by wasn’t exploiting tools designed
Alexandra
Samuel to make online communications
$20.00 as focused and productive as

View Details possible.

The first step is to abandon the

myth of “keeping up”—the belief that you will be able to process
all your e-mails, read everything important in the media, and
send thoughtful posts to your networks without fail. Instead your
goals should be to sort and limit the information you receive and
to streamline the work of reading, responding to, and sharing
what matters.

For example, few e-mails need immediate attention, and some

industry news simply isn’t relevant to your job. It can be a
challenge to restrict what comes into your in-box; most people
I’ve advised are terrified they’ll miss something. But once they
start to filter out the noise and busywork, they find that they’re
more effective at communicating with clients and colleagues,
staying informed about their fields, and building their social
profiles, all with relatively modest investments of time.
E-mail can be one of the biggest distractions. If you always have a
backlog cluttering your in-box, or if you’re so diligent about
replying to messages that you can’t seem to find time for the rest
of your work, then automating at least part of the job offers huge
benefits. Outlook, Gmail, and most other major e-mail tools will
allow you to set rules and filters to ensure that only the most
essential messages reach you right away. You can direct less
urgent messages into other folders automatically and review
those later.

The kinds of e-mails you probably don’t need to see immediately

include newsletters, purchase receipts, internal company notices,
social media alerts, messages on which you are only copied, and
even meeting requests (if they show up in your calendar and can
be reviewed there instead). Remember that these messages aren’t
disappearing—they’re in folders waiting to be read at your
convenience. Designate an hour for that every day or week,
depending on the content.

Filtering your e-mail will make it easier and faster to triage and
review the messages that do make it to your in-box. And if you’re
worried that an important message will fall through the cracks,
you can always periodically skim through everything you’ve
received (select “All Mail” in Gmail, or search your mail for the
letter “a” to bring up a comprehensive display).

Automation tools can streamline the

process of deciding what gets your
attention.

When it comes to news consumption, automation offers the same

rewards. Most of us tune in to a wide range of outlets, thought
leaders, and conversations, but if you’re hunting all over the
internet or scanning lots of social media posts or articles you
shouldn’t bother with, you’re wasting time. Instead, make the
most relevant information come to you by using a newsreader app
such as feedly (my top recommendation, because it works on both
computers and mobile devices), Flipboard, or Reeder. You can
follow or subscribe to your favorite news sources, blogs, and topic
discussions to collect the most pertinent items all in one place.
Then set aside specific times—once a day, or even just a few times
a week—to read them.

You’ll get the biggest gains from this approach if you’re very
specific about the kinds of articles that come your way. To set up a
custom article feed, for example, experiment with different
combinations of keywords, hashtags, and operators in a search
engine (such as “productivity AND #automation”) and then turn
your results into one or more RSS (really simple syndication)
feeds. Not every search service offers RSS feeds, and some make
them a little hard to find, but once you have URLs for the ones
you’ve created, you can copy them into your newsreader app.

Remember that you can’t and don’t need to read everything;

you’re looking for significant stories and insights in your field,
plus a little extra content that gives you something new to think
about—and something unique to share.

What about your digital output? Liking, favoriting, and tweeting

help to build your professional credibility and spark new
relationships, but maintaining that online presence takes a lot of
time. That’s why I advise overloaded executives to automate at
least some of the work.

One easy way is with the newsreader you’ve set up. Most of these
applications offer one-click options for posting to Twitter,
LinkedIn, and Facebook. But it’s even more efficient to use a tool
like Hootsuite, Buffer, or Social Inbox, all of which let you reach
multiple networks from one place and schedule posts in advance.
Once you’ve set up a system like this, you can create a week’s
worth of updates in less than an hour. While reading through the
stories in your newsreader, simply put worthwhile items into your
queue to go out, adding commentary as needed. This natural,
low-effort extension of your reading ensures that you have a
reliable daily presence on social media even when you don’t have
time to look for the latest shareable links.

Today Tiffany is reaping the benefits of automation. She relies on

Gmail filters to separate marketing newsletters and social media
notifications from must-see items, so when she checks her e-mail
during the day, she can focus on the messages that matter most.
She sets aside a couple of periods each week to catch up on the
others, and she uses Social Inbox to send out posts based on what
she finds in industry newsletters. She’s no longer working for her
in-box; she’s reclaimed evening hours for herself; and Element
Three is thriving.

Automation can’t eliminate digital distraction, but it can help you

fight the battle. E-mail filters, newsreaders, post schedulers, and
other tools can significantly streamline the process of deciding
what gets your attention. That will help you feel less
overwhelmed and better able to focus on your most important
tasks, at work or at home, online or off.
ABusiness
version Review.
of this article appeared in the June 2015 issue (pp.110–113) of Harvard

Larry Rosen is a psychology professor at

California State University, Dominguez Hills,
author of iDisorder and coauthor of The
Distracted Mind. Learn more at
drlarryrosen.com.
 Alexandra Samuel is a tech speaker and data
journalist who creates data-driven reports and
workshops for companies around the world.
She is the co-author of Remote, Inc.: How to
Thrive at Work…Wherever You Are (with Robert
C. Pozen) and the author of HBR’s Work
Smarter With Social Media. Follow her on
LinkedIn.

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