The Wellness Docket: Limit Interruptions to Decrease Anxiety and Increase Productivity
Erin H. Durant*
“Imagine opening your laptop at the beginning of the day. Right away, you are faced with an onslaught of emails. You glance over them, a number of them demanding some thought, and you begin to answer them, realizing each takes quite a bit of effort. You then switch to work on a project that you have to finish today, take some phone calls, but then you receive a notification of another email from your supervisor. You jump to that right away to communicate implicitly to her that you are doing your job. But then your calendar notifies you of your next Zoom meeting. It is 10 a.m. but you are already starting to feel fatigued. By three o’clock you can barely think about that project coming due. You start to work on it and find that you have trouble focusing and keep making mistakes.
Professor Gloria Mark’s Introduction to “Attention Span”.
If you follow me on LinkedIn you know that I hate email. At the height of my personal struggles, thinking about checking email would elicit so much anxiety that I might as well have been preparing to fight a tiger. I have read several books and articles lately that have led me to conclude that the reason I hate email is the overreliance on it and other communication tools in the modern workplace and the impact it has on our ability to concentrate and produce high quality work. Let me give you a short summary of the recent literature that informs my thinking.
In A World Without Email Professor Cal Newport he introduces “the Hyperactive Hive Mind” which is “a workflow centered around ongoing conversation fueled by unstructured and unscheduled messages delivered through digital communication tools like email and instant messenger services.” I can think of no better description of the typical law firm’s work flow than it being a “hyperactive hive mind.” Professor Newport explains how overreliance on communication tools can reduce our productivity through constant interruptions. He is critical of the free-for-all that has become the daily competition for our attention and the way in which the knowledge economy has organized into Hyperactive Hive Minds. Professor’s Newport believes that the productivity of the knowledge sector can be significantly increased if we identify workflows that better optimize the human brain's ability to sustainably add value to information. I know that I am not adding any value to the information that I am receiving if I am constantly interrupting my heavy work to handle less difficult but constantly building and disorganized questions asked through email and instant messaging. To speak like an economist for a moment, I am working on implementing smart processes, designing rules that optimize when and how coordination occurs and scheduling my day so that I work on fewer things in order to increase the quality of my outputs.
Professor Newport is not the only academic writing in this area. Professor Gloria Mark is a recognized global expert on how digital tools impact the knowledge work environment. In her latest book, “Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity” she writes about communication tools, productivity and mental health. She discusses her 2016 study in which her team used computer tracking software, bio monitoring and daily surveys to monitor the habits of employees in a research division of a large corporation. She found that they checked their email, on average, 77 times per day. She found that the longer daily time spent on email, the lower the employee’s productivity and the higher the stress level of the employee. “Batching” emails (scheduling time to deal with all emails, sometimes multiple times a day) made people feel more productive but, unfortunately, it did not reduce their stress. She writes in the conclusion that “cutting down on email time could improve the health and wellbeing of employees” and recommends that organizations make a concerted effort to reduce the volume of emails. She also recommends that those who receive a large volume of emails should address them in batches to reduce interruptions. Her work also points to other studies that have found that communication technology overload has a negative correlation with productivity.
Professor Mark’s view after studying these matters, as articulated in the opening chapter of Attention Span, is that “Simply put, our use of personal technologies affects our ability to pay attention. What I have seen is that in the last two decades, human minds have collectively undergone a striking change in how they focus on information. But I have also seen how stress is associated with attention-switching – we need to take this seriously as the World Health Organization identified stress as a health epidemic of the 21st century.”
Professor Daniel Levitin also discusses these issues in his book: “The Organized Mind: Thinking straight in the Age of Information Overload.” He explains the neuroscience behind our ability to multi-task and sort through large amounts of information. Recent neuroscience research has found that the decision-making network in our brain does not automatically prioritize and that we have a natural predisposition to be interested in the newest thing that catches our attention: such as that new email landing in your inbox or chat message popping up on your screen. He notes that our ability to pay attention is a limited capacity resource that can and does get overwhelmed. Today’s workers receive far more information daily than those in past decades and it takes greater cognitive focus to sort through, process and store the information. Constant interruptions hurt our productivity and, it turns out, we are interrupted constantly. A study conducted by Rescue Time of 50,000 users of their platform found that the most common length of uninterrupted focus time during a standard work day was only 20 minutes. Over 2/3rds of those studied never experienced an hour or more of uninterrupted time during the entire period studied. In those conditions, it is incredible that we can get any work done at all. No wonder so many lawyers feel the need to work very early in the morning, late at night or on the weekends to accomplish their most challenging tasks in an uninterrupted state.
In my view, it does not have to be that way. When I was on sabbatical last year for four months, it caused a sudden change in our firm’s workflow. Previously, my associates and staff relied heavily on me for quick answers to relatively easy questions. They usually came in randomly and I would respond to those questions relatively quickly without thinking about how that may impact my own productivity. While I was certainly getting my staff the information that they needed to turn around their work quickly, I was not thinking about the impact that doing so may have on the work that I was trying to accomplish. In addition, my social media habits also had me checking in on various social websites for private messages and to review interactions on content that I had generated. During my sabbatical I made a conscious effort to leave my phone at home while on hikes, bird photography sessions and kept it locked in my home office when I was reading a book or watching television. It took a while for my staff (and myself) to alter behaviours but after about a month, I rarely heard from anyone. It turns out, work could go on without me. They were either able to solve more problems independently or they were able to rely more on each other than on me. Either way, the flow of information coming my way was dramatically reduced. It has remained largely reduced upon my return to work.
I am spending a lot of time thinking about eliminating interruptions and making more time in my day to complete my work. My new morning routine at work is to conduct two hours of deep work on whatever I want before I check my email. Usually that means starting the day around 8 am and checking email at 10 am. I keep my phone off and all communication apps closed during this time. I then deal with the emails and questions from my colleagues which usually lasts at least an hour. This is followed by another pocket of focused work between 11 am and 1 pm. My afternoons are still a mess of emails and scheduled calls, but at least I have already accomplished some work for the day and enter the afternoon less agitated. I find that this pattern is allowing me to get more work done, get less stressed out about distractions and that my stress and anxiety levels are better maintained.
I am no expert in these things but after several weeks of purposing trying to limit distractions and alter workflows I am feeling generally less anxious about getting things done. Managing these things is relatively easy in a small work place. It will be a much larger endeavor to make these changes in a larger workplace, but other industries have tried. Below are some ideas on how you can make some changes to your workplace to reduce distractions, allow your knowledge workers the ability to focus and possibly (according to Professor Mark’s theories) reduce stress and anxiety in the process:
Have discussions and create published rules around communication norms: During the pandemic some lawyers developed and shared their communication expectations which included things like a) the timing and quantity of internal informational emails, b) encouraging use of the delayed delivery feature, c) designated certain days as “uninterrupted work” days, d) the elimination of certain recurring meetings and e) developing and relying on internal Intraweb networks to share certain information rather than having it land in email inboxes.
Have discussions and establish norms regarding availability: Many lawyers feel the need to constantly be reachable on their cell phone. This is often the expectation placed on young lawyers by senior lawyers and on senior lawyers by certain clients. We need to collectively erect boundaries around the notion of constant availability. If we are truly always reachable, that means we are willing to be always interrupted – including when we are doing deep and difficult work. As I hope this article suggests, that is not a productive way of working and it also increases our stress. I am very clear when bringing on new clients about my availability and how our team works. Simply put, I will not be answering your email or returning your phone call in the evening or on the weekend unless there is a five alarm fire. However, I also tell new potential clients that I will be equally respectful of their time and will not deliver my work late, that I will not interrupt their evenings or weekends and that I am able to turn around work quicker and less expensively than individuals who allow for constant interruptions. Clients are paying for access to your brain and you need to set yourself up so that your brain is used to its maximum potential. I have yet to lose a client due to my work habits, I have, however, fired some who did not respect my time.
Communication Batching: I try and review my emails, internal messaging applications and unscheduled phone calls only two times a day, as described above. There are still days where this plan completely goes out the window and I get tied to my email the entire day, but that is usually because I have become distracted and have moved away from my system – not because it was a necessary change in workflow.
Schedule Collaboration time: Our team meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays each week at 9 am virtually. The meeting lasts less than 30 minutes. We catch up with one another personally, bounce ideas off each other about our files and we ask each other any quick questions that need answered before we get on with our day.
It can take some time and training to get people to alter their workflows. We have largely allowed the Hyperactive Hive Mind to drive everything that we are working on, leaving us with little time and attention available to complete difficult work. My challenge to you is to take control of the workflows within your work environment, erect boundaries and rules around communication tools and make note on the impact that any changes make on your team’s mental health.
* Erin Durant is the founder of Durant Barristers a litigation, investigation and sport law firm. She is also the author of “It Burned Me All Down” which is a book about her experience with mental illness as a practicing lawyer. The book also makes recommendations for legal workplaces to improve their work environments. She also has experience representing lawyers in both malpractice and disciplinary hearings. She can be reached at edurant@durantbarristers.com