Interruptions and focus time

Every ping has a cost even when the work still gets done; protect focus and batch what isn't urgent.

The cost is stress, not always output

In a lab study, people interrupted while working finished their tasks faster, with no drop in quality. The price was elsewhere: after just 20 minutes of interrupted work they reported significantly more stress, frustration, workload, effort and time pressure. And an interruption on the same topic was just as disruptiv…

Work is already fragmented

In a field study of information workers, 57% of their units of work were interrupted, and people spent about 11 minutes on one before switching. Most interrupted work was picked up again the same day, after an average of about 25 minutes, with two or more other tasks in between.

The stream is heavy

Microsoft found that its heaviest Microsoft 365 users are interrupted by a meeting, email or notification every two minutes, and 68% of people in its 2023 survey said they lack enough uninterrupted focus time.

What teams can do

Batch the non-urgent. One message with three questions beats three pings.Agree quiet hours as a team, and one route for what truly can't wait.Leave a "ready to resume" note when you're pulled away: where you stopped and what's next. In experiments, a brief plan like this reduced the leftover attention on the old task…

The short version

Interrupted people often work faster, at the cost of stress and effort.Same-topic interruptions are as disruptive as off-topic ones.Batch non-urgent questions; agree team quiet hours.Leave a ready-to-resume note when interrupted.

Try it in Kanvo

Set Kanvo's quiet hours in Settings → Notifications, and set busy channels to Mentions only. Use Send later so your questions land in someone's working hours.

Sources

Interrupted tasks were completed faster with no quality loss, but with more stress, frustration, time pressure and effort after only 20 minutes; same-context and different-context interruptions cost the same.