I struggle with intense, focused work. I’ve blogged about it at length in the past. COVID-19 has shined a light on my shortcomings in focused work, just like it has exposed so many problems with our healthcare system and our ability to make collective decisions. My ability to think deeply requires even more effort now, in the work-mostly-from-home-era, than it did in the past. I blame my computer, with an assist from my cell phone and my lovable but distracting kids.

How distractions impact our productivity

I’m not alone. Work is changing and, for a fifth of us, the change may be permanent. A paper just posted on the National Bureau of Economic Research website looks at the changes in the work day since the COVID-19 pandemic. The investigators used meeting and email meta-data from over three million subjects and found that, compared to pre-pandemic levels, the number of meetings per person increased by about 13% and that those meetings were attended by about 13% more people. More meetings with more people–yikes. But thankfully, the average length of meetings declined by about 20%, for a net reduction in meeting time per person per day in the “post-lockdown period” of 11.5%. Unsurprisingly, email activity was up. And the length of the average workday went up by about 48 minutes, or 8.2%.

I am 100% in favor of shorter, more frequent meetings as this analysis reveals. (I’m particularly a fan of the Scrum framework for project management, in which all meetings are limited to 15 minutes and–at least in the old, in-person world–are to be held standing up to avoid people settling in for too long a meeting.) But this shift may represent a rearrangement of the chairs at the table, so to speak; even with shorter meetings, all the time we’re currently stuck to computer screens, switching from task to task, has been shown to lead to “attention residue,” a phenomenon by which thinking about your last task interferes with your ability to do your current task. I think this is probably reflected in the additional emails being sent.

Think of it this way: you’re banging away at a spreadsheet or a *ahem* blog post, and a text message dings from your phone. That ding takes you out of the flow of your work, and you have to spend time getting that flow back. How long does it take to get back to your pre-text message work level? Fifteen to twenty minutes! This means that, if you get interrupted by an email, text message every twenty minutes all day long, you’re effectively operating at a permanently reduced level. It’s the equivalent of driving your computer while drunk.

How to work differently to increase productivity

One of the authors who has most affected me in the last few years is Georgetown University computer scientist Cal Newport, writer of Deep Work, among several other productivity-themed books. Newport argues that, as more and more of our routine tasks become automated, the ability to perform tasks which are difficult to automate will be the most valuable skill someone can have. And to learn the skills necessary for those tasks, we need to be able to do focused, uninterrupted work without distractions. His tips on doing deep work and avoiding attention residue, as catalogued by others, are especially prescient for the COVID-19 era:

1. Choose a space that’s distraction free.

If there isn’t such a space in your house or office, use noise cancelling headphones to tell your brain it’s time to focus. Be consistent. If you need to signal to family or co-workers that you’re working, negotiate a signal, like a sign, a hat, or an overturned coffee cup on your desk

2. For each task, figure out how much time you’ll devote in a session.

You don’t necessarily need to finish a task in one setting, so feel free to start small, like 15 minutes, and work your way up from there, building your focus like a muscle.

3. Set an environmental structure that allows you to work deeply.

If you can, silence your phone. Ban yourself from non-focused internet for periods of time. Delete social media apps from your phone, or at least silence notifications. Eliminate email notifications on your desktop. If you use Microsoft’s Outlook email system, customize your settings to create a “personal focus plan.” If you’re writing on Microsoft Word, take advantage of the new “focus” feature that turns the usual screen into full-screen mode so that only text is allowed and all other functions are hidden. Focus mode is in the “View” tab, about ¼ of the way down:

4. Ban yourself from the break room or the kitchen during deep work sessions.

Set goals to measure the success of a session, like words written or powerpoint slides created. Post these rules for yourself where you can see them.

5. Value your free time.

That longer workday the investigators found? I bet that roughly equals the time that people spent commuting prior to the pandemic. Now that many of us aren’t commuting, I say we focus our attention during the day in order to take that time back for ourselves. Make a ritual to end the day and signal to yourself that your work is done.

 A professor of mine in medical school told me that she read non-medical books before bed because, if she didn’t, she would dream about patients all night. I’ve had the same experience with work, and I bet you have, too. Intense experiences during the day can be pretty sticky. Tracking off this, one of the strategies I’ve used for the last few years to engage my brain in focused, undistracted activity is to try to read at least 50 books a year, or about a book a week. I try to read a mix of fiction and non-fiction. I write down all the books I read to keep myself honest. I keep this habit for a few reasons: books, unlike the internet, have a beginning and an end. So I know when I reach the end that I’ve accomplished something, even if my next step is just to pick up the next book and start from page one. Books are cheap if you get most of them from the library.

As with other topics KBGH posts on, we’re here to facilitate discussion, not to be scoldy school marms. So if you’ve found other ways to improve the well-being of employees working from home, please let us know!

As the Medical Director of the Kansas Business Group on Health I’m sometimes asked to weigh in on topics that might affect employers or employees. This was a reprint of a blog post from KBGH.