🎒 Microlesson

🪞 Reflect

When you’re working on a task that requires your focused attention, do you leave your email and messaging apps open? 

💡 Concept

You might feel obligated to leave your communication channels open all day to indicate that you’re hard at work. However, leaving applications like Slack and Gmail open during focused work time can decrease your productivity. 

Each ping or pop-up notification becomes a tempting distraction, pulling your attention away from the task at hand. There is a significant cognitive cost to shifting your focus from a complex project to the immediacy of incoming messages, too. These interruptions not only disrupt your current thought process but also require you to spend additional time resetting your focus. 

Even if you’re aware of this issue, it can be hard to disconnect, especially in remote and hybrid work environments. To develop the habit, start small: set a timer for 15 minutes or so and focus on completing a single task. After 15 minutes, take stock of the results. Did you miss any messages that couldn’t wait? And if not, could you have waited even a bit longer before checking in? Repeat the practice until you have longer chunks of time for undistracted, concentrated work.

🎬 Take Action

• The next time you need to focus on a task, try closing your email and messaging apps for just 15 minutes. Work your way up to 30 minutes without distractions, then an hour, then two. 

• Put your computer and phone on “Do Not Disturb” mode.

• Set your status to inform your colleagues that you are focused on a task and therefore temporarily unavailable (for example: “Heads Down Work” or “Focused work”). 

• Reply to messages at set times or intervals rather than responding to messages immediately. 

✅ Check In

🧠 Keep Learning

Learn about how to set up your own deep work session with the Hybrid Team Success Toolkit. 

🎁 Learn with your team!

Refer our weekly microlessons to your team members to learn as a group! Just follow the instructions in the section below to get started.