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A Day Without Distraction: Lessons Learned from 12 Hours of Forced Focus
A Day Without Distraction: Lessons Learned from 12 Hours of Forced Focus
Published May 24, 2011 by Cal Newport
Here are the rules: All work must be done in blocks of at least 30 minutes. If I start editing a paper, for example, I have to spend at least 30 minutes editing. If I need to complete a small task, like handing in a form, I have to spend at least 30 minutes doing small tasks. Crucially, checking email and looking up information online count as small tasks. If I need to check my inbox or grab a quick stat from the web, I have to spend at least 30 minutes dedicated to similarly small diversions.
I followed these rules for one full work day. This post describes why I did it and what I learned.
Continuous Partial Attention
The motivation for my experiment should sound familiar. Over the past half-decade, researchers have been sounding the alarm on the dangers of multitasking. Gloria Mark, for example, a professor at the University of California at Irvine, found that the technology workers she studied would make it, on average, only 11 minutes into a project before being distracted. It then took 25 minutes to return to the task post-distraction. For some jobs, where responsiveness is crucial, this work style might be necessary. But as an academic, I'm a to-do list creative -- to keep my job, I have to keep up with logistical tasks, but to advance, I need long bouts of focus on hard problems. For a to-do list creative, ignoring the small stuff isn't an option, but living in a state of continuous partial attention (to steal a phrase from Linda Stone) won't cut it either. The solution to this quandary is well-known by now: batching. Check email only a small number of times per day! Work in big chunks without distraction!Everyone has heard this suggestion. But almost no one follows it. This is why I launched my experiment. I wanted to see what would happen if I forced myself to batch.Ignoring the small stuff isn't an option, but living in a state of continuous partial attention won't cut it either.
A Day of Forced Batching
I feel the normal temptation to check my email while writing - just in case - but my rules forbid it.
To handle my meeting dilemma, I send my collaborator an email that reads: "During the following times this afternoon I'll be working on this project, if you happen to be free anytime in here, stop by my office, otherwise tell me some times when we might meet tomorrow and I will get back to you at the end of the day to fix one." I've now freed myself from needing to keep my inbox open during the afternoon.
From 2 to 5:30 I'm working on my research problem. The rules remove any possibility of distraction -- no matter how brief -- and this seems to improve my focus. "There's a real sense of momentum here," I write in my notes.
At 5:30, I decide to do one final small task block to shut down my day. I treat this like a challenge: how much can I squeeze into one 30-minute block? The time constraint provides a certain urgency to my actions usually lacking at 5:30 in the evening. I end up finishing my work emails for the day, answering some blog reader emails, paying the rent, approving a design concept, sending a message to a pair of old friends, planning the next day, and recording the notes from this experiment.
In the end, the momentum carries me past 6:00 and I end up finishing closer to 6:30. This is later than I normally like to work, but the day ends with a satisfying feeling of accomplishment.
Conclusions
Having a clear rule that forbids any distraction during focused work was freeing.
At the same time, the careful pre-planning required to satisfy my batching rules increased the efficiency of my small task completion. Even though I dedicated 6 hours in one 10 hour work day to uninterrupted focus, another 1.5 hours to exercise and eating, and another 1 hour to a doctors appointment, I still managed to accomplish an impressive collection of logistical tasks both urgent and non-urgent.
My bottom line:
To do batching right requires the type of strict rules I deployed in my experiment. These rules, as I discovered, will absolutely make your day more difficult. There's no avoiding the reality that there will be times when you have to take convoluted action to solve a problem that could so easily be handled with just a quick bounce over to your inbox.
This is a pain in the ass.
At the same time, however, if you survive the annoyance, there's also no avoiding the reality that your work will be of a much higher quality.
Ultimately, this is the batching trade-off: inconvenience in your daily workflow in exchange for an increased quality of your work.
From my experience writing about productivity, most people will abandon a tactic as soon as it makes their life more difficult. My experience with batching, however, leads me to question whether we need to rethink where we place our emphasis.
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What's Your Take?
Have you experimented with forced focus? How did it go?More about Cal Newport
Cal Newport is a Computer Science professor at Georgetown University and the author of Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. If you pre-order Deep Work before Christmas, you’ll gain access to a invite-only webinar in which Newport will breakdown exactly how he prioritizes deep work in his own professional life (see here for details).
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