Empreendedorismo e Inovação Mercado

Interrupted Work Costs a Lot!

In 2008, Gloria Mark from Department of Informatics (University of California, Irvine) conduct studies to identify extension of interruptions and how affect tasks, recovery of tasks after interruptions and timing of interruptions.

This study conclude that any interruption introduces a change in work, since people that are constantly interrupted develop a mode of working faster (and writing less) to compensate for the time they know they will lose by being interrupted.

After only 20 minutes of interrupted performance people reported significantly higher stress, frustration, workload, effort, and pressure.

There’s good news and bad news (study looked at all work that was interrupted and resumed on the same day). The good news is that most interrupted work was resumed on the same day (81.9 percent).

The bad news is, when you’re interrupted, you don’t immediately go back to the task you were doing before you were interrupted. There are about two intervening tasks before you go back to your original task, so it takes more effort to reorient back to the original task.

Yet working faster with interruptions has its cost: people in this conditions experienced a higher workload, more stress, higher frustration, more time pressure, and effort. So interrupted work may be done faster, but at a price!

Halvor Gregusson article:

Balance all of that on top of the financial cost (estimated at $588 billion every year nationwide) and you can see we, as a workforce have a serious problem with interruptions.

How are you dealing with interruptions in your workplace?

Bibliografia

Mark G. et al. “The Cost of Interrupted Work: More Speed and Stress”. 2008.

Yast. Disponível em: https://www.yast.com/time_management/science-task-interruption-time-management Acesso em 9 de setembro de 210r.