Mental Health Monday: Attention residue

Something that I’ve been wanting to talk about for a little time is attention residue.  I came across it in an article by Cal Newport^[1] author of the book Deep Work.  Attention residue is explained “When you turn your attention from one target to another, the original target leaves a “residue” that reduces cognitive performance for a non-trivial amount of time to follow.” 

I’ve noticed this a lot in my new job.  Going from a solo operator to being in charge of 118 people and 5 departments comes with a huge change in demand.  And being able to navigate that effectively is something that I'm trying to get skilled in. 

When you turn your attention from one target to another, the original target leaves a “residue” that reduces cognitive performance for a non-trivial amount of time to follow

Cal Newport - Study Hacks Blog

Where I started was getting to work at 7:30am and planning my calendar, then trying to squeeze in a little bit of work before the meetings started. From 9-5 it was a constant stream of catch ups, little questions, and 70-150 emails of importance.  I was finding that the only quiet hours were between 10pm and 2am … a couple of hours sleep and then at it again. Not ideal, and not sustainable.

Turning over a new leaf this year I’ve been trying to get my time under control.  That meant delegating where I can, encouraging people to develop networks for more support, and carving out standup meetings when I needed it.  

Delegating is great. Used well with support means career growth.  If someone has a great idea for captioned performances on mobile devices I’ll encourage them to research and come back to me with information.  Then when they are ready to present it to the senior leadership team, they are centre stage. All I need to do is remove roadblocks.

It also works well as an opportunity.  Have a problem with the buggy website?  Welcome to QA testing.  Great at complaining finding all the errors in the last marketing email? How about being on the copy review list.  There are a lot of ways to use those powers for good and bring teams together.

Developing networks is another great one that I learnt years ago.  If I lack support, as many of us ND folk do, then I can make some. For work answers there is the great Tessitura Network of wonderful people, and I can point out great people to talk to rather than do it myself. It builds resources and makes the sector stronger.

Standup meetings are a great way to reduce the amount of random pop ups.  I have an agenda linked to each meeting and I’ll ask us all to put non-urgent questions into that agenda.  Also I have set up a few cross team meetings, so rather than me being the nexus of everything, ticketing systems can hand over a new show to boxoffice and front of house simultaneously and they can do a theatre walk through together checking needs. 

By blocking as many of the pop-ins and catch ups into meetings as I can, I can reduce the amount of checking I need to do.  I can set a pomodoro timer like Forest^[2] which actively blocks other apps, and block in email catchups a couple times a day rather than every moment.

At any rate, Cal Newport's article on attention residue was a big eye opener for me.  I might not have the answers yet but I think that I’m slowly getting there.

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_{[1] A Productivity Lesson from a Classic Arcade Game; Cal Newport https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2016/09/06/a-productivity-lesson-from-a-classic-arcade-game/}

_{[2] Forest https://www.forestapp.cc/}

_{[3] Why is it so hard to do my work? The challenge of attention residue when switching between work tasks; Dr Sophie Leroy https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0749597809000399}