Managing distraction

Every few minutes at work, something tugs your attention away—yet most people still believe they’re “multitasking.” Here’s the twist: even brief pings can drain your brain’s fuel and leave you more tired, with less to show for it. So why does distraction feel productive in the moment?

Every interruption doesn’t just steal time; it changes *how* your brain works for the next chunk of the day. In knowledge work, that’s devastating. UC Irvine’s field data shows people are knocked off course roughly every 3 minutes, and it can take over 23 minutes to return to real depth. Do the math across a day and you realize many people rarely experience an uninterrupted half hour.

The real trap is that much of this isn’t dramatic—no fire alarms, just quiet nudges: a Slack ping, a colleague’s “quick question,” a mental itch to check one more tab. Each tiny switch draws on working memory and glucose, like a musician forced to swap instruments mid-song, over and over.