Why is it so hard to get back to work after an interruption?

PursueUpdated 10 October 20264 sources

Short answer

Because part of your attention stays with the task you left. Sophie Leroy's 2009 experiments at the University of Minnesota call this attention residue: people who switched before finishing did worse on the next task, and a 2008 study by UC Irvine and Humboldt University researchers found interrupted people sped up to compensate, at the cost of more stress and frustration.

01Attention residue

In two experiments, Sophie Leroy found that when people switched away from a task before finishing it, part of their attention stayed behind, and they performed worse on the next task. Finishing the first task, under some time pressure, left less of that residue[1].

02Faster, but more stressed

A lab study by UC Irvine and Humboldt University researchers, with 48 people, mostly German students, found that interrupted people finished their tasks in less time and with no loss of quality. They paid for it in stress, frustration, time pressure and effort. They seem to make up for interruptions by working faster[2].

When the interruption lands also matters. Interrupting at different points inside a task changed how people felt and how they judged the person interrupting them[3], and waiting for a natural break reduced frustration[4].

03About the minutes figure

You may have read a precise number of minutes it takes to refocus. None of the studies here measured that, so we don't repeat one. What they do show is that the cost is real, that it lingers, and that it depends on what you left unfinished.

Something to try today

Before you switch, write one line saying where you stopped and what the next step is. Closing the loop on paper is the nearest thing to finishing, which is what reduced residue in the experiments[1].

Pursue

How Tre-Up approaches this

This is why Pursue offers one step with an end point, not a list. A small thing you can finish frees attention for the next one.

Tre-Up is an iOS app in development. Pursue is the AI inside it. This note describes research and design intent, not results from the app. Nothing here is medical advice.

Sources

Summaries are written in our own words from each source's abstract, public record or official text. Follow the link to read the original. How we write these notes

  1. 1.Leroy S (2009). Why is it so hard to do my work? The challenge of attention residue when switching between work tasks. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 109(2):168–181.University of MinnesotaOur summarydoi:10.1016/j.obhdp.2009.04.002
  2. 2.Mark G, Gudith D, Klocke U (2008). The cost of interrupted work: more speed and stress. Proceedings of CHI 2008, 107–110.University of California, Irvine · Humboldt-Universität zu BerlinOur summarydoi:10.1145/1357054.1357072
  3. 3.Adamczyk PD, Bailey BP (2004). If Not Now, When? The Effects of Interruption at Different Moments Within Task Execution. Proceedings of CHI 2004, 271–278.University of Illinois Urbana-ChampaignOur summarydoi:10.1145/985692.985727
  4. 4.Iqbal ST, Bailey BP (2008). Effects of intelligent notification management on users and their tasks. Proceedings of CHI 2008.University of Illinois Urbana-ChampaignOur summarydoi:10.1145/1357054.1357070

Keep reading

All notes
  1. 01Do phone notifications hurt focus, even if I don't check them?Yes. In a 2015 Florida State University experiment, simply receiving a notification hurt performance on an attention-demanding task about as much as calling or texting, even when people never touched the phone. In a field experiment with 221 adults (Kushlev et al., 2016), people reported more inattention in the week their alerts were on.Interruptions and attention
  2. 02When is the right moment for a reminder or a nudge?When the person is able to take it in, which changes from moment to moment. In a trial with 1,255 users of a workplace well-being app (Bidargaddi et al., 2018), the same message made people about 4% more likely to use the app in the next day, and about 12% more likely at 12:30 on weekends.Timing and receptivity

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