Halfway through a pricing review, your phone buzzes. You glance at it for thirty seconds, and the picture in your head of occupancy, the renewal calendar, and competitors’ advertised rents falls apart.
Gloria Mark, a professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, had researchers shadow information workers, including managers and financial analysts, and time everything they did. She told Fast Company the workers switched activities about every three minutes. She has put the average return to interrupted work at about 23 minutes. Treat that figure as a strong signal from small field studies, short of a settled law.
The evidence cuts both ways. In one lab experiment, people interrupted while sorting email finished faster with no drop in quality, though they reported more stress and time pressure. Sorting email is light work. A pricing review asks you to hold several moving parts at once. In a later study, when Mark’s team cut office workers off from email for five days, their stress dropped, and they stayed on single tasks longer.
Four decisions need the long stretch: pricing, personnel, operational redesign, and financial review. Those are the ones your notifications interrupt most.
So check email in two fixed windows a day (I like 11 a.m. and 4 p.m.), and keep your phone on silent and out of view during site visits. Your team can still reach you. Tell them: “I’m checking email at 11 and 4. Only if there is fire, flood, or blood, call me.”
Mark has said roughly half the interruptions she observed were self-inflicted. Turning notifications off handles the pings. The phone out of sight handles the habit.
Practice it intentionally for five working days. On Friday, compare this week’s decisions with last week’s and decide the difference.
Protect the stretches where you make your hardest decisions. — Mike Brewer
Discussion Prompt: Which of your biggest decisions this week will you protect with a phone-free block, and what will you tell your team before you start?