We all get distracted. But while we recognise the cost of the initial distraction, we fail to understand the deep effects that distraction has. Even when we get back to our work, we’re not fully at work.
Yes, we might just respond to a quick text message or Facebook post and then return to the document we have open, but we’re not truly engaged in the task. Our mind has wandered on to something else, and it can take up to 15 minutes for us to get back to the previous depth of focus.
There are some studies that show that even just having our phone on the table while we’re at work distracts us. The mere presence of this device changes our ability to focus.
Why is the phone so tempting? Psychologist BF Skinner showed us that random reinforcements are incredibly powerful. If you give a rat a piece of food every 100 times it presses a lever, that’s exciting. But what if it’s a random number, between one and 200? You might think that the rat would press less, because it’s not clear when they’ll get a reward. But the reality is the rat presses much harder, and for longer. Even if the reward goes away, the rat keeps on pressing.
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To some degree, the electronic world around us is random reinforcement. Take email, for example. It’s mostly uninteresting, not that important and rarely urgent. But from time to time, something is useful or important, and that’s what keeps us coming back to check our phones again and again.
Apple could help us break this cycle. When we get distracted, it’s not at the moments we’ve chosen to be sidetracked: it’s when other people think about us and want to contact us, or when an app we have thinks it’s the right time to pipe up.
Apple’s iOS could figure out which notifications are truly urgent and which are not. We’ve done some experiments that show that just batching notifications and delivering them every three hours gets people to be more productive, sleep better and suffer less from stress.
The second thing Apple could do is try and understand how productive we are, and only interrupt when it’s the right moment for us. It could try and track what we call “flow”, this rare state when we’re really into something and we are excited and concentrated.
Apple could measure our productivity using a combination of how we type and move the mouse, and only send us notifications when we’re not in a state of flow. If you’re writing something continuously at a certain speed and you don’t stop too much, you’re more likely to be in a flow. If you type and stop after every word, you’re probably not.
If we’re in an app that doesn’t require focus, such as Facebook, then it can stop us at any time. It’s only if we’re using an app where we’re producing something then it should wait until we switch to another app, or find a better moment when we’re not in this state of flow. To me, taking this state away from us is a crime. It’s something that’s so rare that we should try and preserve it.
These suggestions aren’t easy to implement, and I don’t think any company is actually that proactive in helping us improve our productivity. But given the importance of the topic, and how much energy and attention we are losing, I can think of very few things that Apple could do at this point in time that would be more useful to mankind.
Dan Ariely is James B Duke professor of psychology and behavioural economics at Duke University
This month at WIRED we're looking at how the world's most valuable company can own the future. This is how Apple can think different and change the world all over again.
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK
