I was thinking about attention and distraction. It’s what I hate about email. Imagine working on something intently and with a great deal of focus. Then you take a break and check your email for five minutes. No harm, right? It’s just five minutes!
Then you go and start another part of your work and try to focus intently. But this time you seem to have lost your ability to focus. Your attention is on something else. There was an email that came through and somebody needs you to do something, but you don’t have the time.
Now you have to contend with a stressor that you would not have had if you hadn’t looked at email. Not only is this pressure decreasing the capacity for your brain to focus, but your attention is being stolen from the new task you’ve started.
Long, uninterrupted blocks of focused work are like gold. Shut out the world, the music, the emails, the noise, the stuff that stops you from diving deep into what you’re working on.