We are interrupted every 11 minutes. We are interrupted by incoming email, the phone ringing, and colleagues stopping by our office. We even interrupt ourselves sometimes, to go read Facebook or browse the web. You very well may not make it through this post without an interruption. Research suggests that it is hard to recover from an interruption, with it taking us up to 15 minutes to return to focused activity. Given we are interrupted so often that we never achieve full efficiency, interruptions cause a significant loss in productivity.
Picking up a task after an interruption is easier when a person is interrupted at a breakpoint, and when the task being returned to has a clearly achievable short-term outcome. Researchers have tried to use these insights to decrease interruption costs by strategically scheduling interruptions to occur at breakpoints, helping users set goals upon interruption, and reminding users of their goal upon return.
However, we can also change the nature of the task itself to make it more interruption-friendly. Selfsourcing is a way to help people to perform large personal information tasks by breaking them down into small, achievable microtasks. This facilitates recovery from interruptions, benefiting overall productivity and helping people take advantage of time that might otherwise be wasted.
Selfsourcing may be particularly useful during periods of divided attention. Over and over again, research has shown that multitasking leads to loss of overall productivity. For example, nobody can really write a blog post and listen to a presentation at the same time, like I am trying to do right now. People who try to do both end up not really doing either well. I have found, however, that I can perform very small selfsourcing microtasks while attending fully to something else, because the small task size allows me to do them quickly during the inevitable downtime. Perhaps I should figure out how to selfsource my blogging.
Related paper:
J. Teevan, D.J. Liebling, and W. Lasecki. Selfsourcing Personal Tasks. CHI 2014 WiP.
Making a task interruption-friendly is essential in today's fast-paced world, where distractions are inevitable. One technique that has really helped me is breaking down tasks into smaller, manageable chunks and using tools like timers to stay on track. This approach makes it easier to pick up where you left off after an interruption. As someone who often juggles multiple responsibilities, including I also consulted a professional to do my online Law class help when needed, because it was impossible for me to manage my classes and other activities. I've found that maintaining a clear to-do list and prioritising tasks also significantly reduces stress. By being adaptable and organised, you can handle interruptions without losing productivity.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very fascinating concept and especially I would love to highlight a Chinese proverb which rightfully fits the impact of multitasking and that goes "A person who chases two rabbits, catches none", which signifies how effective is the idea of Selfsourcing and I am thrilled to use it as a student who is bombarded with stack of academic tasks, and obviously the side effect of multitasking shatters my productivity, although I will still require help with CIPD assignments but for other subjects I can use selfsourcing as one of my go-to tools.
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