Smartphones gave us the magic and power of 24/7 connectivity. It sounds like a dream for the modern workplace. Bosses are able to gain access to their staff all day, all night, into the weekends. Staff are able to remain plugged in, and keep a pulse over what’s happening and what needs to be solved by the minute. It sounds awesome to unlock those latent after-hours that workplaces didn’t used to be able to tap on.
But what are the long-term, bigger-picture effects of constant connectivity on the quality and depth of our work? Has anyone thought about that in our workplaces?
The problem with constant connectivity, is constant distraction. People can’t focus anymore. When people have to solve deep problems, or to work out tough tasks, the following commonly happens:
- Our focus gets hijacked by a constant stream of requests and tasks from various parties, not just from our bosses. These requests and tasks are usually comparatively non-cognitively demanding. But in trying to multi-task, our fractured attention is not in a position to be able to bury deep, to wrestle with tough concepts, and to figure out complex problems. Academics, government policy staff, strategy guys in big firms, software engineers – all of these people need to carve out mental space and capacity for deep work, yet their phones steal that away from them.
- What also happens is that people start to resort to working after-hours, or at unearthly hours really late at night, to get real work done. When most of our day is filled with an unending barrage of low-cognition tasks and wasteful meetings, we end up doing real work only after the work day has ended. This eats into your time to recharge, or to get some perspective about the larger picture of your work.
A solution is to put your phone away during the times you have to buckle down and focus. No, it’s not rude – we need to set and shape a culture that respects and upholds high-quality deep work to prevent a state of constant distraction from taking over. If we fear missing out on important things from our bosses, we can set tailored alerts on our phones to ring or buzz if certain bosses text or call us. The rest, is just noise that will hold you back from achieving what you need to do.
Humans naturally work in sprints. So outside of those sprints, we can take time off deep focus and turn our attention to these low-cognition tasks. Just by shifting these tasks around and consolidating them into structured blocks that respects humans’ natural productivity and focus cycles, we can get a lot more done within a shorter amount of time. And we can take that well-deserved break in the process.
Working Woke 