Working in stretches

This chapter is about how to stay on the one thing once you've chosen it. It's built from the research in earlier chapters and from common practice. Nobody has tested it as a whole.

Name the stopping point before you start. A stretch needs an end you've chosen in advance. It can be a point in the task, such as the end of the costs paragraph. It can be a length of time, and somewhere between twenty-five and fifty minutes suits most people. Knowing there's an end makes it much easier to refuse the pull to switch. The email can wait until the stopping point, and you know when that is.

Clear the decks. Close the inbox. It isn't enough to minimise it. Silence the phone and turn it face down, or put it in a drawer. Close the tabs that belong to other tasks. Each of them is an invitation to switch, and refusing invitations all morning is tiring.

Keep a capture sheet. Thoughts about other tasks will arrive, and some will be useful. Don't act on them and don't try to hold them in your head. Write three words on a sheet beside you and return to the task. "Chase supplier re March." You can deal with it at the stopping point. This matters more than it sounds, because many self-made switches begin with a perfectly good thought that you were afraid of losing.

When you stop, write a parking note. Before you leave a task, write one line saying where you are and what the next action is. "Costs para done. Next, pull Q2 figure from Sam's sheet, then start risks." It takes fifteen seconds. Sophie Leroy and Theresa Glomb tested something like this in four studies. When people were interrupted and expected to be short of time when they got back, their attention stayed stuck on the interrupted task and they did worse on whatever they'd been pulled onto. A brief plan for returning, which the researchers called a ready-to-resume plan, removed the problem. The note does two jobs. It lets your mind let go of the task, as Masicampo and Baumeister's plans did, and it cuts the restart when you come back, because the thread is written down.

Handle human interruptions with a sentence. When a colleague appears, you have options beyond dropping everything. "Can I come and find you in twenty minutes?" is nearly always acceptable. If it can't wait, say "Give me ten seconds", write your parking note, and then give them your full attention. They'll get a better answer from you that way as well.

Batch the reactive work. Pick two to four times a day for messages, and deal with them as a task of their own. Tell people how to reach you if something is truly urgent, which for most workplaces means ringing. In the first week you may want to check more often than that. Even once an hour on the hour is a great improvement on continuously.

Use the waits properly. When a task really does pause, because you're waiting for an export or an answer, write the parking note and then pick a small item from the capture sheet. Don't pick the next big thing, or the export will finish while you're deep in it.

Take real breaks. Between stretches, get up and walk about, and look out of a window. Scrolling on your phone doesn't count as a break. It's another task, with its own residue.

Expect the first few stretches to be uncomfortable. The pull to check will come every few minutes at first. It weakens noticeably within a week or two if you don't feed it.