Very few things irritate me as much as interruption.  This is especially true when I am talking about something important.  However, we now live in a world where constant interruptions reign.  Our phones flash or vibrate every few minutes with notifications; our smart watches flash with every new text message.  This is in addition to all the traditional forms of interruption like phones ringing, people knocking on our office doors, and our children calling for us while we are in the middle of a task.

While interruptions cannot be eliminated (and many should not be), we should limit some forms of interruptions because interruptions affect us in three ways.

1. Lowering the quality of work

In this Sydney Morning Herald article, Sarah Berry discusses “attention residue.”  This is a term to describe the effects of interruption and task switching on productivity.  The basic idea is if we are interrupted and switch tasks, then the quality of our work on the second task will be low.  It will also take several minutes to refocus to our optimum level.  Interruptions hurt our attention and our productivity.

2. Losing Flow and happiness

I have written in my article, “The Notification Went Off,” about Flow and how it helps us and actually contributes to our happiness.  In order for Flow to be achieved, we must be wholly focused upon the task we are engaged in, but interruptions break Flow.  So, interruptions will actually take a lot of our happiness from us.

3. Missing Life

Some of us have become enslaved to our notifications; we live for notifications, and we refresh our apps every few minutes to see what has happened in the last few minutes whether it is our social media apps, our news apps, or our fitness apps.

How can we solve this problem?

While we cannot (and should not) eliminate all forms of interruption from our lives, we should definitely limit the different types of interruption especially the unimportant ones.  I recently got a smartphone, and I have made sure to silence notifications, so they do not distract me as I am working, speaking, or simply living.  I choose when to look at my notifications, and I do not let them interrupt me.  It may be good for all of us to do so as well.  This way we will not miss out on life, beauty, serenity, and peace.

How often are you interrupted per day?  How many of those interruptions are unimportant?  Have you been able to limit the unimportant interruptions and keep them in your control?  How?