Reply to WhatsApp messages, check emails, answer calls, attend meetings, and still deliver strategic tasks. For many professionals, this is their everyday reality. The problem is that, despite the intense pace, actual productivity does not seem to keep up with the volume of effort.
“We live in a state of constant distraction. Technology has brought speed, but also brutal competition for our attention.", affirms Virgilio Marques dos Santos, co-founder of FM2S Educação e Consultoria, a specialist in career management and PhD from Unicamp.
According to him, the feeling of exhaustion at the end of the workday, even without major deliveries, is a clear symptom of the impact of frequent interruptions at work. "Every time we are interrupted, our brain needs to make an extra effort to resume reasoning. This cycle of breaking and resuming consumes cognitive energy and impairs decision-making," he explains.
This effect is not new. Classic studies on information overload, such as the one published in 2007 by Cheri Speier, Joseph Valacich, and Iris Vessey,Decision Sciences,They already demonstrated that frequent distractions reduce mental clarity and increase the incidence of errors. The difference is that, with current hyperconnectivity, the situation has worsened — and the cost is now also measured in mental health.
The impact of distractions on daily corporate life
In the workplace, distractions are often normalized. Successive meetings, instant messages, constant notifications, and quick interruptions from colleagues accumulate and create noise that sabotages concentration.When this becomes routine, important decisions are made based on incomplete information or without proper reasoning. And this can directly affect the results of a project or an entire area", says Santos."
He remembers that the multitasking professional, once celebrated, is now viewed with more caution. Being productive is not about doing many things at once, but about making progress on the tasks that truly matter, with depth and full attention.
Four strategies to protect focus and improve performance
In this scenario, Santos lists four simple practices that can help reduce the impacts of interruptions and increase work effectiveness:
1. Focused time blocksReserve periods of the day for strategic tasks, with notifications turned off and interruptions minimized. Inform the team about this routine to align expectations;
2. Priority managementUse tools like the Eisenhower Matrix (which divides tasks into four categories: urgent and important, important but not urgent, urgent but not important, and neither urgent nor important) to differentiate what is urgent from what is important. Thus, the risk of wasting energy on low-impact demands is avoided.
3. Communication schedulesFocus message and email checking at specific times of the day. This reduces the anxiety of always being available and improves time management;
4. Culture of respect for timeIncentive not to have clear and planned communication. Many questions can be resolved in pre-scheduled meetings or through more direct message exchanges.
"Regaining focus is more than a matter of efficiency. It is a way to take care of our mental health and the quality of the decisions we make every day," concludes the specialist.
