Interrupting Your Interruptions

The following is an instance where research is actually useful.

In the pursuit of a PhD in this highly dynamic world, interruptions are ever-present. You are constantly bombarded by entities that demand your attention. Your email icon bounces around demanding to be read, text messages beep and demand to be answered, Google chat contacts demand to know how you are doing, office mates desire your attention to double check their work, all while Twitter keeps you up to date with the play by play of everything that is happening to everyone who knows you (relevant or otherwise) !

In Trafton's research on resuming interrupted tasks, he analyzes the responses of people who are interrupted while performing a task. Half of the subjects receive a warning preceding the interruption, while the other half of the subjects are immediately interrupted with no warning. The subjects who were warned of an impending interruption were able to prepare more for the divergence than participants in the immediate interruption condition, and resumed the interrupted task more quickly.

So what does this mean to you? When you are hard away at work on that important research paper, analysis, brainstorming session, and you are interrupted by a distraction, take that interruption signal as a warning. Give yourself some time to prepare to leave the task. Get yourself to a nice "stopping point" before you service the interruption. This will help you to return to your research much quickly, without getting distracted and wondering ".... now what was I doing ???" post-distraction. Interrupt the interruption by taking ownership of how and when you will choose to leave your task. This will help to ensure that you will be able to easily resume working.

J. Gregory Trafton, Erik M. Altmann, Derek P. Brock, Farilee E. Mintz, Preparing to resume an interrupted task: effects of prospective goal encoding and retrospective rehearsal, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, Volume 58, Issue 5, Notification User Interfaces, May 2003, Pages 583-603, ISSN 1071-5819, DOI: 10.1016/S1071-5819(03)00023-5.