AM on a Tuesday. Twelve out of 22 isn't bad – one study says 86 percent of the e-mails we get aren't critical for work.4
Most people don't think distractions affect their productivity. They are distracted, they say, but they still get to what needs to be done. As someone who has studied distraction for years, I can tell you that very few people are honest about its cost in their lives, and almost none have realistic strategies to overcome it. They think they're working harder and more efficiently than ever. But they've never actually worked less.
Since 2007 (the same year, notably, that the iPhone was released), the decline in employee productivity has been staggering. One efficiency expert says we can lose more than six hours a day to interruptions.5 Another estimates that these interruptions waste 28 billion hours a year, costing the U.S. economy nearly $1 trillion.6 A different study about multitasking – a mantra for many employers – found that it costs the economy $450 billion annually.7
While productivity has plummeted, connectivity – the extent to which we have access to one another – hasn't.
And with all that constant connection, the borders between work and life are crumbling.
In one survey, 87 percent of employees admitted to reading political social media posts at work.8 Other research shows that 60 percent of all online purchases occur between 9 AM and 5 PM and that 70 percent of U.S. porn viewing also happens during working hours9 (“working” from home?). And if none of that convinces you, perhaps this will: Facebook's busiest hours are 1 to 3 PM – right in the middle of the workday.
So maybe it's not surprising when the latest Gallup poll finds that the majority of employees worldwide aren't engaged in their work.10
And yet all these studies might only scratch the surface, relying as they do on the perceptions of people who want to think they're working. How much time do you actually spend on uninterrupted work? How much time do your people?
Yet it's hard to imagine returning to a time when employees like Harry were less accessible and lacked powerful tools at their fingertips 24/7. In truth, we love being able to reach the Harrys in our lives anytime, anywhere. You can call or e-mail him. You can chat via IM because he's usually active. You can text, tweet, or even tap him on the shoulder, since he's probably nearby. No matter your method, he'll respond right away – which is why so many of his colleagues consider him a saint.
But whether those who depend on him know it or not, Harry is far from sainthood when it comes to productivity. Harry commits sins of omission. He fails to accomplish even half of what he's capable of. Although he may get high marks, his actual value has never been lower.
It's easy to blame the employees. But I've got some hard news: The problem is with you.
Chapter 2
It's Not Their Fault
Today's employees aren't lazy, entitled, belligerent, unethical, or incompetent. (Although there are always exceptions.) Many of them simply haven't known a world in which they weren't chronically busy and connected – and the rest are forgetting what this seemingly mythical world looked like.
Historically, employees have never had so much within immediate reach…while being so immediately reachable.
They've never processed so much information…while retaining so little.
They've never been more connected…while facing so many interruptions.
They've never been so distracted.
Distracted (dis'traktəd), adjective: unable to concentrate because one's attention is diverted by something that amuses or entertains.
Our devices and the constant connection they bring keep us in a perpetual state of distraction. The amusing consequences of distraction have become distractions themselves: a viral video of a woman at an NBA game smacked in the face by a basketball, another of a woman falling into a mall fountain, still another of a man strolling straight up to a bear. (Bonus points if you make it through this chapter without looking them up.)
And then there are the seriously tragic stories: a woman hit by a bus, a hiker walking off a cliff, a driver veering into a semi – all while staring at a phone, oblivious to the world around them.
Sometimes the device is a pair of headphones and the casualty someone's career. A chief financial officer of a publicly traded investment firm once asked me to coach an employee he was on the verge of firing because his ears were always covered. The CFO liked his work. The employee was a top producer in the company. He was still one step away from getting fired.
Our attention has never been more coveted and correspondingly depleted. We're so used to being entertained by cat massage videos (please tell me you've seen them) that we struggle with sustained thinking – the very kind of thinking that is required to innovate in business. In the workplace, leaders tend to favor either the “one-man band” multitasker who lacks focus or the employee who is so hyperfocused that she ignores other priorities. What's needed is a realistic model of focused attention.
“Pay attention!” was my teachers' favorite thing to say to me. Turns out the phrase dates to the fourteenth century, affirming attention's long standing as a form of payment (I still owe my teachers substantial back payments). In the constantly connected workplace, the command has become much more than a metaphor. “Attention is the real currency of businesses and individuals,” Tom Davenport writes in The Attention Economy, adding that it can be traded, purchased, and “converted into other currencies.”11
Herbert Simon framed this currency for the Information Age: “What information consumes is rather obvious: It consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”
If attention is currency, the job of a leader is to help employees get rich. Companies pay big bucks to learn what we want to see and how to get us to opt in. For your people, the stakes are even higher: Attention buys both material and intrinsic satisfaction. Your success as a leader will be measured by how well they spend their hard-earned share.
In the constantly connected workplace, attention is squandered on hundreds of insignificant requests, offers, and alluring inquires. The Digital Age delivers the world to us, but it also delivers us to the world. Smartphones, e-mail, live-stream videos, and social apps put us in higher demand than ever before. Place and time, “at home” and “after hours,” no longer exist. No matter where your people are, the people in their lives are constantly demanding their attention.
Naturally, they feel worn down – even paralyzed – by infinite demands. It's amazing they get anything done at all. Odysseus could steer past the deadly but seductive Sirens, but would he have stood a chance against e-mail, Facebook, and the latest Snapchat filter?
The plight of the constantly connected isn't about weakness or willpower. Those e-mail, text, and “like” notifications can elevate the production of oxytocin and dopamine in the same way a drug addiction does.12
Oxytocin and dopamine are powerful neurochemicals. Dopamine – the “pleasure”
“The Shape of Email,” Mimecast, October 2012, http://www.tbline.nl/index_htm_files/Mimecast-WP-Shape-of-Email-Report-Consumer.pdf.
Brigid Schulte, “Work Interruptions Can Cost You 6 Hours a Day. An Efficiency Expert Explains How to Avoid Them,”
Schulte, “Work Interruptions.”
Bryan College, “How Are Multitasking Millennials Impacting Today's Workplace?” accessed April 28, 2017, http://www.bryan.edu/news/multitasking-at-work.
Kris Duggan, “Feeling Distracted by Politics? 29 % of Employees Are Less Productive after U.S. Election,” BetterWorks, February 7, 2017, https://blog.betterworks.com/feeling-distracted-politics-29-employees-less-productive-u-s-election/.
Juline E. Mills, Bo Hu, Srikanth Beldona, and Joan Clay, “Cyberslacking! A Wired-Workplace Liability Issue,”
“The Engaged Workplace,” Gallup, accessed May 1, 2017, http://www.gallup.com/services/190118/engaged-workplace.aspx.
Thomas H. Davenport and John C. Beck,
Nora D. Volkow, “Drugs, Brains, and Behavior: The Science of Addiction,” National Institute on Drug Abuse, July 2014, https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugs-brains-behavior-science-addiction.
