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You know how it is you get back in to the office and you get into a task and along comes someone and interrupts you and disturbs your train of thought. Some days you may feel constantly interrupted and really low on productivity. Indeed research into interruptions has shown interruptions to have dramatic negative impacts on productivity.
This is something time management experts and people like myself in my famed time control workshops have preached over the years. Manage your interruptions to increase your productivity. Lockdown has probably also proven this with many people and companies reporting increased productivity.
However, I have also not proposed cutting out these interruptions altogether. They sometimes provide welcome distractions, increase productivity of others, increase creativity, but also have a bonding element to them. And this is precisely what some recent research has shown.
This research was led by Harshad Puranik of the University of Cincinnati. The study surveyed 11 employees twice a day for three weeks. This included measuring work interruptions, how mentally drained they felt, sense of belonging, and overall job satisfaction.
