By R. Ryan Patel DO, FAPA OSU-CCS Psychiatrist
While there are benefits to having roommates, living with others, electronic devices, studying with others; even brief interruptions of work can have drawbacks. A study (1) by Mark and colleagues looked at this issue.
What was the study?
- Mark and colleagues (1) studied the impact of interruptions via phone or interruptions via instant messaging on 48 college students, average age 26 years old.
- Participants were given information and asked to answer related emails as “quickly, politely, and correctly as possible”.
- During the task, participants were subjected to phone or instant messaging interruptions related, or unrelated to the task or no interruptions.
What were the results?
- Mark and colleagues (1) found that people in the interrupted conditions experienced a higher workload, more stress, higher frustration, more time pressure, and effort.
- Depending on the type of interruption, they also found that it could take upto 23 minutes to return to the original task (1).
What are some potential strategies to minimize interruptions?
- When studying minimize/turn off unnecessary notifications on your electronic devices.
- Students may want to time some of their studying around the schedules of others in their living situation (house with family members, roommates, etc); and parts of the day when there are fewer interruptions by others. It may be helpful to proactively communicate with others about your wish to not be interrupted for certain times of the day.
- Identify study areas on campus that have few interruptions.
- Some students may benefit from white noise or instrumental music to help maintain focus others may prefer a quiet space.
- It may be useful to study or do a key task or two first thing in the morning before using electronic devices or doing other tasks.
- Try keeping a notepad handy to make a note of any ideas or thoughts that may occur while you are working on a task.
- Experiment doing 1 task at a time for with various chunks of time, to determine how long an ideal chunk of time is for you to stay focused on a single task. This may help you schedule things more effectively in the future.
- Consider meditation practice to improve your focus.
- Consider the OSU Dennis Learning center to improve your study skills.
- For stress management and mental health: Go to our mental health support options page: https://ccs.osu.edu/mental-health-support-options/
Other thoughts:
- This is a small study and further research in this area is needed.
- It is possible that some people may work better in high interruption environments.
- It is also possible that interruptions have a different impact depending on the type of work you are doing and they type of interruption.
- Further research in this area is needed.
By R. Ryan Patel DO, FAPA OSU-CCS Psychiatrist
Disclaimer: This article is intended to be informative only. It is advised that you check with your own physician/mental health provider before implementing any changes. With this article, the author is not rendering medical advice, nor diagnosing, prescribing, or treating any condition, or injury; and therefore claims no responsibility to any person or entity for any liability, loss, or injury caused directly or indirectly as a result of the use, application, or interpretation of the material presented.
References:
- Gloria Mark, Daniela Gudith, and Ulrich Klocke. 2008. The cost of interrupted work: more speed and stress. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’08). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 107–110. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/1357054.1357072