Why you should care.

Whether we know it or not, we are all – every single one of us – engaged in a battle for a scarce resource.

Our attention.

If we lose, we are unlikely to live up to our full potential and our lives will be less fulfilling.

I want to help people redress that balance.

A few facts to illustrate the point.

Fact 1.

Interruptions are productivity killers:

9 of the top 10 productivity killers in the workplace are all interruptions

28% of a knowledge-worker’s day is characterised by interruptions

On average we switch tasks every 3 mins

It takes on average 23 minutes to get back to the original task once interrupted

Fact 2.

Multi-tasking is a myth. We can only pay attention to one thing at a time. What we do, however, is rapidly task-switch, a cognitive function some are better at than others. For the majority of us, we need some hacks to manage our task-switching, especially when it is caused by interruptions.

Fact 3.

People average 5.4 hours screen time a day on their smartphones. That works out to be 82 days a year. Imagine what you could with that time instead.

Fact 4.

Fact 5.

Our brains use up 22% of our bodies’ energy requirements, yet why do we only think about nutrition if we are working out physically?

Fact 6.

80% of people respond to emails on demand, as and when they receive them.

More about my research and practice

The blog that started it all – summarising my research
My full dissertation is available to download here
My blogs and articles on the subject and issues of personal productivity

Please check out what others are saying, too

Many are raising concerns over the extent to which we have control over our attention, and what it means for our mental health and well-being. I recommend you check out the following people and resources.

to follow