You log in at work and start checking emails. You were able to read a few before your mind began to wander. You get up to make coffee, hoping it will help you focus. You begin drafting an output you need to submit by noon, but it doesn’t take long before you get distracted again.
Focus is critical to productivity, but workplace distractions seem to be unavoidable. They can come from anywhere — company environment, management, unhealthy working habits, and more. However, being aware of the most common focus killers benefits any company because they will be better equipped to address them.
If you’re looking for a cost-effective way to improve your company’s performance, then this is the time for you to stop and consider the things that kill the concentration of your employees. It’s time to devise solutions to enhance their focus and, consequently, their productivity.
I. Distracting Work Environment
There are primary factors to consider in a working environment. The first would be its physical characteristics, such as lighting, background noise, or choice of furniture. Non-ergonomic furniture, improper lighting, or excessive noise can all create distractions at work.
Meanwhile, the second category involves a company’s workplace culture. Are your coworkers extremely competitive? Are they friendly? Does the management listen to feedback and suggestions? Do they like to micromanage? The answers to these questions can help you determine what is breaking your work concentration.
Considering these two categories, it is valuable to understand that what works for one employee may not necessarily work for another. Every employee must find a work environment that best aligns with their personality and habits. Similarly, every company should do its best to provide its employees with the work environment most conducive for them.
Julie Lock, the Commercial Director at Advanced People Management, states, “If you create a work environment that caters [to] the physical and mental well-being of your employees, it becomes a great place to be.”
Let’s look at how the environment of different work setups today affects the focus of employees.
Traditional Offices
The traditional office remains the most common work setup despite the drastic demand for work-from-home after the pandemic.
Some of the distractions experienced by employees who work in a traditional office environment are:
- General office noise
- Frequent gossip by coworkers
- Irrelevant orders from superiors
- Snack breaks
- Unnecessary spontaneous meetings
- Lingering stress from commuting
A 2018 Survey by Udemy of Business reports 80% of respondents pointing at chatty coworkers as top distractions in the workplace, followed by 70% pointing at office noise.
Working From Anywhere
Work-from-Anywhere dramatically increased flexibility. However, there is also the potential of having too many non-work-related distractions present. These distractions come in the form of:
- House chores
- Disruption from family members
- Unsupervised social media time
- Messy workspace
- Visitors
Most spaces, such as cafes, parks, or homes, aren’t designed for work the way a traditional office is. It’s not unusual for employees to find multiple distractions in these places. However, working from anywhere gives control of the space to the employee instead of management — not everyone works best in a traditional office, and some people find it easier to work in a bustling coffee shop. Employees must be intentional about choosing or designing their working space to suit their work habits best.
Hybrid Work
The hybrid working environment may offer a happy medium between work from anywhere and traditional office space. As Yaron Spektor, Executive Director of LTI and Co-Founding Board Member of GICC Coaching, says, “Hybrid work [also] permits employees and teams to rip the benefits of both worlds, working remotely and in the office as needed.”
The clue word there is “as needed”.
When working in a hybrid setup, you experience the distractions posed by both environments, but you can escape those distractions by shifting your setup. However, the need to adjust to a different working environment every time may be a distraction in itself.
How to Address It
Different jobs require different working environments. Similarly, different employees will have different optimal working setups. To avoid focus killers that come from a badly-designed or poorly-chosen work environment, employees should be able to decide the work setup that functions best for them within the scope allowed by the nature of the job. However, the onus is on the employee to ensure that their working spaces fit their jobs and preferences.
In general, however, a healthy working environment should:
- Give each employee enough space to work independently
- Encourage collaboration
- Have a work desk with only work-related stuff on it as much as possible
- Have enough supervision to keep employees accountable
“Employers should take initiatives to motivate employees by improving work environments,” a 2017 case study of a company in Jordan strongly suggests. “As employees are motivated, their job performance will increase.”
Ideal working environments improve the quantity and quality of employee output — a win for the whole company. It may seem questionable at first to spend a lot on things such as office lighting or ergonomic furniture, but it’s best to look at these expenses as investments. This will be more cost-effective in the future.
Of course, employees also have an equal share of responsibility in designing their workspaces, especially when working from somewhere the employers have no complete control over.
II. Digital Distractions
Digital distractions for traditional office employees typically involve social media, but that’s not the only distraction they might experience. Furthermore, digital distractions are significantly more challenging to address for employees that don’t work in traditional offices.
Some of the most common forms of digital distractions in the workplace are:
- Social media
- Texts and phone calls
- Emails
- Internet browsing
- Too many digital productivity tools
- Unnecessary video conference calls
Some items in this list may be helpful tools to improve how you work, but sometimes they can also become a distraction. For instance, employees may spend too much time responding to emails when they could be doing more urgent tasks instead. They might also hyperfocus on scheduling and organizing tasks without actually doing them.
How to Address It
Simply releasing a “No Social Media During Work Hours” memo will not do the trick. According to Rahul Dhandhania, the Vice President of Digital Products and Transformation at HSBC:
“No matter what safeguards they put to ban social networking sites or monitor employee digital behavior, employees are going to find ways to outsmart the system. Instead of controlling or curbing digital behavior, employers must focus on educating employees and making them realize the repercussions of their actions.”
Specifically, employers and employees can take the following steps to minimize digital distractions:
- Use simple digital tools
- Conduct training on the proper use of digital platforms
- Include everything in one cohesive email
- Turn off personal social media notifications
- Educate employees on the effects of digital addiction
III. Excessive Multitasking
While many employers consider multitasking a beneficial trait in an employee, it is also one of the most overromanticized traits in the workplace. Many people do not realize that excessive multitasking significantly decreases work quality. You end up focusing on quantity instead of the quality or significance of the work an employee performs.
“We don’t actually multitask,” says Peter Bregman in a Harvard Business Review article. “We switch-task, rapidly shifting from one thing to another, interrupting ourselves unproductively, and losing time in the process.”
People multitask in an attempt to do more. Unfortunately, multitasking often results in people doing less than if they had focused on and completed one activity at a time. When you try to start too many tasks at one time, there’s a significant tendency you’ll end up not finishing any of them, which is not cost-effective for both the employee and the company.
In a traditional office, multitasking typically involves work-related jobs, but can also include menial, irrelevant, or repetitive tasks assigned to employees by management. It can also include having to cover for another employee. In a work from anywhere setup, an employee might also be trying to do house chores or family duties at the same time as work.
Daniel Goleman, the Senior Consultant at Goleman Consulting Group, states, “To help a person or team stay focused on coming up with the best possible solutions, people have to be protected from other agendas.” Focusing on one task is typically the best way to perform.
How to Address It
Requiring employees to multitask is often a result of bad planning and scheduling. Assigning multiple tasks to one time block instead of dedicating smaller chunks of time to them can cause them to run into each other. It’s vital to maintain focus.
To avoid losing your focus due to multitasking, here is what you need to do:
- List all tasks arranged by the date you need them done
- Schedule the urgent ones first
- Try to do only one thing at a time
- Limit the tabs on your computer to avoid being tempted to multitask
Of course, it is also sometimes valid when employees express that they have too much to do and that multitasking is inevitable. Employers and managers should also be sensitive regarding how they distribute the workload in the office. Proper human resource planning can improve a company’s performance significantly.
IV. Lack of Time Off Work
Although it may sound counterintuitive, lack of time off from work can significantly affect an employee’s capacity to focus while working. Overworking leads to stress, and stress can lead to burnout. Burnout drastically decreases an employee’s motivation, focus, drive, and work quality. When this happens, your brain either becomes foggy or just starts to drift away to other things.
On the other hand, when you take time off work, you are allowing your brain and body to recuperate. Then, you can return to work refreshed and capable of giving your 100% focus on the job you have to do, resulting in better job performance.
“When we step away, we can have a-ha moments we can’t see when we’re too close, actively trying to solve a problem,” says Jen Arnold, the owner of Redesigning Wellness.
Furthermore, giving employees adequate time off is also beneficial to the company. Rested, happy employees can work at 100% capacity.
How to Address It
Taking time off can seem like a bad idea when there’s a lot of work to do. There’s also a lot of satisfaction that comes from getting things done, but all companies need to strike a balance between finishing a lot of work and doing that work well. Few clients and customers will appreciate low-quality output. You can only do this when you take adequate rest.
To be able to do so, you should get in the habit of:
- Listening to your body
- Including breaks in your schedule (and following it!)
- Finding places of rest
- Doing self-care
- Visiting new places to experience new environments
There should always be the right amount of work-life balance. Taking breaks is vital to achieving that. If you’re an employer looking for more tips on encouraging work-life balance for your employees.
V. Obsessing Over Perfection
One common job interview question is this: Is it better to submit work that’s good enough on time or submit perfect work late? Employers will generally prefer the former. Although it’s best to create high-quality output, it’s critical that everyone, from employer to employee, understands that perfection is typically not attainable. Even if it’s doable, the expenses required to achieve it tend to be unsustainable.
“Perfectionists constantly scan the landscape, looking for flaws to correct,” observes Alain Hunkins, Leadership Strategy Contributor at Forbes and CEO at Hunkins Leadership Group, LLC.
However, when an employee focuses too much on the flaws, they fail to concentrate on anything else. They end up losing sight of the bigger picture. Moreover, delaying the present task while trying to attain perfection will only delay other tasks too. When the second task gets delayed, its quality also decreases. Obsessing over perfection is counterproductive to the company.
How to Address It
The first thing you need to do to recalibrate your focus on the task at hand is to understand when enough is enough. There is always room for improvement, but there is always a next time for it. You’ll be able to perform when you can focus on the bigger picture. What can you feasibly do within a reasonable amount of time with the resources that you have available?
Specifically, it’s best to focus on the following concepts:
- What is necessary for the job
- The schedule agreed upon
- The things you are doing well on
- What you can improve for next time
How Focus Improves Performance
An article published by the Indeed Editorial Team quotes, “In terms of the workplace, an employee is focused when their attention is geared toward completing their main goal or objective.”
Simply put, a focused employee is someone who gets things done. It is someone who does their job and meets their goals. They do not get sidetracked by things that do not directly relate to their work, resulting in better job performance and productivity.
Therefore, focus killers such as an unhealthy work environment, digital distractions, multitasking, lack of rest, and perfectionism are also performance killers. Employers and employees alike must be wary of these and address them properly to ensure that the company continues to perform at its peak capacity.
How Focus Improves Cost-Effectiveness
When it comes to the workplace, time always has value. To be more specific, every single second has a monetary equivalent. Lack of focus wastes a lot of time and consequently, a lot of money.
According to an article from Business News Daily, the lost work caused by distractions cost American businesses more than $650 billion annually. This is an extremely costly loss, further emphasizing why every company should take active measures to lessen workplace distractions as much as possible.
“When you recognize how much interruptions affect every aspect of the business, you can get to work on boosting morale and building profits,” writes Pamela Hazelton, a marketer and business consultant, in a Medium article.
Of course, at the end of the day, it might not be possible to prevent all focus killers from affecting you and the company. However, one should take active measures every day to minimize them. Even something as simple as turning off your phone notifications can save you time, stress, and money.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. How do you improve your ability to focus in the workplace?
You have to train yourself to focus gradually. Start by building good concentration habits such as scheduling one task at a time, keeping away things you know will distract you, and setting boundaries. Remember not to rush into it, and try to focus on consistently growing timeframes.
2. Are there positive effects of distraction in the workplace?
While distractions generally affect your work negatively, they can also have some positive effects. They can sometimes inspire creative ideas, take some of your stress and anxiety off, and give you a sign to take a needed break.
) asked this question before launching client compliance agents. They assigned “agent owners” like human staff, with weekly audits — errors dropped 35% and adoption reached 80% vs industry average 50%.
