And yet all these studies might only scratch the surface, relying as they do on the perceptions of people who want to think they're working. How much time do you actually spend on uninterrupted work? How much time do your people?
Yet it's hard to imagine returning to a time when employees like Harry were less accessible and lacked powerful tools at their fingertips 24/7. In truth, we love being able to reach the Harrys in our lives anytime, anywhere. You can call or e-mail him. You can chat via IM because he's usually active. You can text, tweet, or even tap him on the shoulder, since he's probably nearby. No matter your method, he'll respond right away – which is why so many of his colleagues consider him a saint.
But whether those who depend on him know it or not, Harry is far from sainthood when it comes to productivity. Harry commits sins of omission. He fails to accomplish even half of what he's capable of. Although he may get high marks, his actual value has never been lower.
It's easy to blame the employees. But I've got some hard news: The problem is with you.
Chapter 2
It's Not Their Fault
Today's employees aren't lazy, entitled, belligerent, unethical, or incompetent. (Although there are always exceptions.) Many of them simply haven't known a world in which they weren't chronically busy and connected – and the rest are forgetting what this seemingly mythical world looked like.
Historically, employees have never had so much within immediate reach…while being so immediately reachable.
They've never processed so much information…while retaining so little.
They've never been more connected…while facing so many interruptions.
They've never been so distracted.
Distracted (dis'traktəd), adjective: unable to concentrate because one's attention is diverted by something that amuses or entertains.
Our devices and the constant connection they bring keep us in a perpetual state of distraction. The amusing consequences of distraction have become distractions themselves: a viral video of a woman at an NBA game smacked in the face by a basketball, another of a woman falling into a mall fountain, still another of a man strolling straight up to a bear. (Bonus points if you make it through this chapter without looking them up.)
And then there are the seriously tragic stories: a woman hit by a bus, a hiker walking off a cliff, a driver veering into a semi – all while staring at a phone, oblivious to the world around them.
Sometimes the device is a pair of headphones and the casualty someone's career. A chief financial officer of a publicly traded investment firm once asked me to coach an employee he was on the verge of firing because his ears were always covered. The CFO liked his work. The employee was a top producer in the company. He was still one step away from getting fired.
Our attention has never been more coveted and correspondingly depleted. We're so used to being entertained by cat massage videos (please tell me you've seen them) that we struggle with sustained thinking – the very kind of thinking that is required to innovate in business. In the workplace, leaders tend to favor either the “one-man band” multitasker who lacks focus or the employee who is so hyperfocused that she ignores other priorities. What's needed is a realistic model of focused attention.
“Pay attention!” was my teachers' favorite thing to say to me. Turns out the phrase dates to the fourteenth century, affirming attention's long standing as a form of payment (I still owe my teachers substantial back payments). In the constantly connected workplace, the command has become much more than a metaphor. “Attention is the real currency of businesses and individuals,” Tom Davenport writes in The Attention Economy, adding that it can be traded, purchased, and “converted into other currencies.”11
Herbert Simon framed this currency for the Information Age: “What information consumes is rather obvious: It consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”
If attention is currency, the job of a leader is to help employees get rich. Companies pay big bucks to learn what we want to see and how to get us to opt in. For your people, the stakes are even higher: Attention buys both material and intrinsic satisfaction. Your success as a leader will be measured by how well they spend their hard-earned share.
In the constantly connected workplace, attention is squandered on hundreds of insignificant requests, offers, and alluring inquires. The Digital Age delivers the world to us, but it also delivers us to the world. Smartphones, e-mail, live-stream videos, and social apps put us in higher demand than ever before. Place and time, “at home” and “after hours,” no longer exist. No matter where your people are, the people in their lives are constantly demanding their attention.
Naturally, they feel worn down – even paralyzed – by infinite demands. It's amazing they get anything done at all. Odysseus could steer past the deadly but seductive Sirens, but would he have stood a chance against e-mail, Facebook, and the latest Snapchat filter?
The plight of the constantly connected isn't about weakness or willpower. Those e-mail, text, and “like” notifications can elevate the production of oxytocin and dopamine in the same way a drug addiction does.12
Oxytocin and dopamine are powerful neurochemicals. Dopamine – the “pleasure” chemical – is tied to experiences like eating, sex, and drugs. “Our brains are wired to ensure that we will repeat life-sustaining activities by associating those activities with pleasure or reward,” according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.13 When drugs – or social media – feel “life-sustaining,” our brains are just doing their job all too well. Poor focus is the natural consequence of this neurochemical rush. Distracted employees are present without really being there, like the hapless people-slash-fuel source in The Matrix.
In the movie (spoiler alert), human beings lose themselves in a virtual world of endless seductions divorced from the messy, difficult reality known as Zion. (Sound like the Internet?) The problem, of course, is that it's not real. They're actually resting in a coma-induced cocoon while their bodies are being used as batteries to feed the machine. But the machines learned that give humans a virtual experience and neurochemical euphoria (i.e., girl in restaurant), and they will contentedly remain in a helpless and dependent stupor. However, while most of the world lives in bliss inside this fake world, a few know the truth, have unplugged, and are fighting for the rest. All goes haywire when Cypher, a long-time member of Morpheus' (Laurence Fishburne) rebel team decides – over a steak dinner and a presumably expensive glass of Cabernet with Agent Smith – that it's worth betraying his team in exchange for the hollow but alluring life in the Matrix. His one major condition: that he remember nothing of the real world. For him, ignorance was bliss. Better to escape into a sea of distraction than be forced to engage life on real terms. He chose distraction at a life-threatening cost to his team. More disturbing than the film itself is how prophetic the story has become. And in the real world, employees (and leaders) addicted to connectivity aren't just selling out their organizations and teams; they are also selling out themselves.
Distraction wins.
Focus loses.
Productivity plummets.
Efficiency becomes a myth.
And companies are starting to take notice.
How do I know? Because I'm the guy they hire to fix the problem.
Chapter 3
Tools of Our Tools
Throughout my childhood, I struggled to keep focused. When I was 12 years old, a doctor diagnosed me with attention deficit disorder. The challenge took a new shape as I left the confines of academia to enter the workforce in my early 20s. Bursts of extreme focus and a knack for digesting