The biggest culprit is one of the tiniest: the smartphone. Its mere presence calls for you to pick it up. It doesn’t have to be ringing, beeping, or vibrating. Researchers have found if it’s in your line of sight, then it’s on your mind. They cut down on everything from split-second decision making to long-term goal setting. This goes for laptops, too. Even for those who walked into a meeting laptop-free, if one is open at the table then concentration suffers for everyone.
Your iPhone or Android is a stimulus too potent for its own good. First, its location on your desk dictates easy reach. Second, it’s a tool used for all of your possible personal needs and goals. Its breadth of applications endless, you could learn of a natural disaster, check-in on potentially affected friends, and donate money to the clean-up in five minutes flat. To be fair, that’s an admirable use of your distraction device, but you see the point.
Its constant stream of information torpedoes working memory capacity, a limited resource for temporarily holding information available for processing. It commands your automatic attention as a frequently relevant stimulus not associated with the task at hand. In short, a cellphone becomes a decoy for what actually needs to be accomplished. Despite best intentions, everyone’s cognitive abilities only stretch so far and so efficiently.
So throw your cellphone into a desk drawer for the day. Pause your inbox. Disconnect from the hive. And find a cozy spot away from colleagues, knowing all the while, you and your job are better off for it.
