Time Confetti Is Ruining Your Productivity
Summary. When it comes to doing complex focused work to a high standard, we need dedicated pockets of distraction-free time. When we fragment our time, we drastically reduce our ability to focus and ultimately do our best work. But what can we do about it?
It’s the fourth day I’ve sat down to finish an important part of a project. Over the last seven days I’ve scheduled time blocks into my diary, activated my Spotify playlist and worked diligently to banish this item from my to do list once and for all – or at least so I thought. In a nutshell, I’ve sat down to do the work. A few times. So why the hell is it taking me so long!?
As I look back over the preceding days, it becomes starkly obvious. Confetti. Yes – confetti. Those little granules of colourful joy we shoot out at weddings. But here, I’m talking about time confetti.
So, what is time confetti?
Time confetti1 is when larger blocks of time become fragmented into smaller chunks, giving the illusion of less time than is available.
A typical example is the scenario of sitting down to do focused work. But within a few minutes of starting, your phone rings or you go online to do a quick check on the news “just for five minutes”. What on paper looks like an hour dedicated to our work, in practice becomes little 10 to 15-minute fragments of time.
This drastically gets in the way of our ability to get things done – specifically focused work - in the most efficient way as possible. These small distractions result in a task-switching between activities which makes it difficult to get into the state of flow so crucial to doing work to the standard we need and within the time scales we want.
In a nutshell, because we‘re constantly breaking up our time, we can’t quite build-up the momentum we need. Just as a plane needs enough runway to build up lift to take off, we need an amount of undistracted time to build momentum in our work – the momentum we need to make breakthroughs and resolve challenging problems.
One way to think of focus is that it’s proportional to time - up to a point - and that focus increases with the duration of sustained undisturbed effort (distraction-free time). The more time we spend concentrated on a task, the more focus and clarity we build up. We build up a clarity-momentum which results in better work.
Each time we switch our attention away from a task, our clarity-momentum decreases, a bit like the velocity lost by a plane on a runway. As we break up our concentration into smaller fragments, we eventually loose all momentum.
Furthermore, as we switch from task to task - or more accurately switch context - we experience attention residue2. An idea that was first brought to mainstream attention by Cal Newport in his book Deep Work.
“When you turn your attention from one target to another, the original target leaves a “residue” that reduces cognitive performance for a non-trivial amount of time to follow”
In simple terms our attention remains divided between multiple points of focus leading to lower concentration and poorer performance.
If you’re sold on this, you’re probably wondering what the solution is. Especially when as a society we’ve inadvertently conditioned ourselves to constantly attention-switch and seek novelty at every chance we can get. For those of you who are already productivity ninjas with an unwavering level of willpower, you can stop reading now. But for the rest of us mortals, the following strategies could prove to be helpful.
Time-block distraction free time
Time-blocking is simply the act of setting aside a specific period of time in your schedule for a certain event. In this scenario, we’re talking about an appointment with yourself to carry out distraction free work.
At the start of my day, I like to run through the various activities coming up, from items on my to-do list to meetings and potential conversations I need to have. This allows me to carve out chunks of distraction-free time. This means, no phones, no checking of email and no internet surfing. This results in protected time to carry out focused work.
If like many of us you work in an open-plan office or with a team, you may have to take this strategy further by managing the expectations of those you work with. If you find your attention is continually being requested on other items when you’re doing focused work, you might find that negotiating periods of distraction-free time may prove beneficial. I personally like to have days where I work remotely, but when this isn’t possible – which is quite often the case in my work – I simply look for the largest gaps of meeting-free time. The point isn’t to get everyone working around you, but for you to find the most compatible pockets of time for “deep work”.
Keep a distraction list
We’ve all experienced the scenario of various ideas, thoughts and distractions popping into our heads as soon as we get down to do focused work. We remember that phone call we need to make or that email we need to send or even that message from mum we need reply to. We then end up trying to use willpower to remember these things (or not to do these things) during our work session. This uses up vital bandwidth needed to do our work.
I’ve found that keeping a distractions list allows me to get these thoughts out of my head and quickly get back to the task at hand. In noting these, there’s a sense of having dealt with the distractions. I like to do this on paper but even a digital version of this works.
Gather your reference material before you start your session
Whether we like it or not, email has become an ever-present dysfunctional vehicle in our modern workflow. We use it to communicate. And we use it to transfer valuable information. Sadly, this isn’t compatible with developing our abilities to focus deeply on demanding tasks. There are more times than I’m willing to admit where I’ve gone to look for a useful document during a focused session and instead found myself languishing in a blackhole of email. Despite what my egotistical logical self thinks, I just don’t have the willpower to defend against the dopamine-releasing powers of email.
To guard against this, I like to gather the reference material I’ll need for my task before I start my session. This protects me from my brain’s natural tendency to want to deal with novelty rather than the important task at hand. Given how deeply email has become embedded in our modern work, I’m not always successful, but this is an imperfect solution to an imperfect problem. If you’re interested in how you can make your workflows less reliant on email it’s worth looking into using tools such as Kanban boards or digital versions such as Trello.
Make use of your best cognitive hours
Some of us are morning people. Some of us feel better as the day goes on. Personally, I’m one of those people who feels at their best in the morning. My mind is less busy, and my energy is highest. In my work it’s also when everyone else is busy with their bits of work (so they actually leave me alone). As a result, I find the work I do during morning hours is usually my best work. This is when I like to schedule in those big chunks of attention sapping tasks.
Your finest hours might not be in the morning. The key is that you know them, and you use them to do your best work.
I’ve found that just these four habits have improved my ability to build my focus muscles and ultimately produce work of a higher standard. The result has been better work with less stress and time spent in the office. And that means more time for other meaningful pursuits.
References
1. Time Confetti
Book - Time Smart by Ashley Whillans
Book - Overwhelmed by Brigid Schulte
http://www.brigidschulte.com/books/overhelmed/
2. Attention residue
Book - Deep Work by Cal Newport
Paper - Why is it so hard to do my work? The challenge of attention residue when switching between work tasks by Sophie Leroy
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0749597809000399
