research-article

Public Access

Effects of Individual Differences in Blocking Workplace Distractions

Authors:

Mary Czerwinski,

Shamsi T. IqbalAuthors Info & Claims

CHI '18: Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Paper No.: 92, Pages 1 - 12

https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3173666

Published: 19 April 2018 Publication History

Abstract

Information workers are experiencing ever-increasing online distractions in the workplace, and software to block distractions is becoming more popular. We conducted an exploratory field study with 32 information workers in their workplace using software to block online distractions for one week. We discovered that with online distractions blocked, participants assessed their focus and productivity to be significantly higher. Those who benefited most were those who reported being less in control of their work, associated with personality traits of lower Conscientiousness and Lack of Perseverence. Unexpectedly, those reporting higher control of work experienced a cost of higher workload with online distractions blocked. Those who reported the greatest increase in focus with distractions blocked were those who were more susceptible to social media distractions. Without distractions, people with higher control of work worked longer stretches without physical breaks, with consequently higher stress. We present design recommendations to promote focus for our observed coping behaviors.

References

[1]

Saeed Abdullah, Mary Czerwinski, Gloria Mark, and Paul Johns. 2016. Shining (blue) light on creative ability. Proceedings of ACM UbiComp '16, 793--804.

Digital Library

[2]

Ritu Agarwal and Elena Karahanna. 2000. Time flies when you're having fun: Cognitive absorption and beliefs about information technology usage. MIS Quaterly, 24 (4). 665--694.

Digital Library

[3]

Brian Bailey, and Joe Konstan. 2006. On the need for attention aware systems: Measuring effects of interruption on task performance, error rate, and affective state. Journal of Computers in Human Behavior, 22(4): 709--732.

[4]

Richard A. Block, Peter A. Hancock, and Dan Zakay. 2010. How cognitive load affects duration judgments: A meta-analytic review. Acta psychologica 134, no. 3: 330--343.

[5]

Scott W. Brown and Marilyn G. Boltz. 2002. Attentional processes in time perception: effects of mental workload and event structure. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 28, no. 3 (2002): 600.

[6]

Duncan Brumby, Anna Cox, J. Back, and Sandy Gould 2013. Recovering from an interruption: Investigating speed-accuracy trade-offs in task resumption strategy. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 19, 95107.

[7]

Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi. 1990. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper & Row.

[8]

Mary Czerwinski, Eric Horvitz, and Susan Wilhite. 2004. A diary study of task switching and interruptions. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, (CHI '04). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 175--182.

Digital Library

[9]

Mary Czerwinski, Eric Horvitz, and Edward Cutrell. 2001. Subjective duration assessment: An implicit probe for software usability. Proceedings of IHM-HCI 2001 conference, vol. 2, 167--170.

[10]

Laura Dabbish, and Robert Kraut, 2004. Controlling interruptions: awareness displays and social motivation for coordination. Proceedings CSCW 2004, ACM Press, 182--191.

Digital Library

[11]

Delve Analytics. https://products.office.com/enus/business/explore-office-delve?tab=Discovery.

[12]

Angela Lee Duckworth and Margaret L. Kern. 2011. A meta-analysis of the convergent validity of self-control measures. Journal of Research in Personality 45, no. 3 (2011): 259--268.

[13]

Daniel Epstein, Daniel Avrahami, and Jacob T. Biehl, 2016. Taking 5: Work-breaks, productivity, and opportunities for personal informatics for knowledge workers. Proceedings of CHI 2016, ACM, 673--684.

Digital Library

[14]

Focus. Retrieved 2016. Available at http://masterbuilders.io/

[15]

Focus booster. Retrieved 2016. Available at https://www.focusboosterapp.com/

[16]

Freedom. 2016. Retreived 2016. https://freedom.to/freedom.

[17]

T. Gillie, and D. Broadbent. 1989. What Makes Interruptions Disruptive? A Study of Length, Similarity, and Complexity. Psychological Research 50: 243--250.

[18]

Jennifer Gluck, Andrea Bunt, Joanna McGrenere. 2007. Matching attentional draw with utility in interruption, Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, San Jose, 41--50.

Digital Library

[19]

Aaron Gouveia. 2014. Wasting Time at Work Survey. Available at http://www.salary.com/2014-wastingtime-at-work/.

[20]

Sandra G. Hart and Lowell E. Staveland. 1988. Development of a multi-dimensional workload rating scale: Results of empirical and theoretical research. In P.A. Hancock & N. Meshkati (Eds). Human mental workload, Amsterdam: Elsevier, 139--183.

[21]

Eric Horvitz, Carl Kadie, Tim Paek, and David Hovel. 2003. Models of attention in computing and communication: from principles to applications. Communications of the ACM 46, no. 3: 52--59.

Digital Library

[22]

Shamsi T. Iqbal, and Eric Horvitz, 2010. Notifications and awareness: a field study of alert usage and preferences. Proceedings of the 2010 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work. ACM, 2730.

Digital Library

[23]

Shamsi T. Iqbal and Brian P. Bailey. 2008. Effects of intelligent notification management on users and their tasks. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '08). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 93--102.

Digital Library

[24]

Shamsi T. Iqbal and Eric Horvitz. 2007. Disruption and recovery of computing tasks: field study, analysis, and directions. Proceedings of CHI '07, ACM, New York, NY, USA, 677--686.

Digital Library

[25]

Jin, Jing, and Laura A. Dabbish. 2009. Selfinterruption on the computer: a typology of discretionary task interleaving. Proceedings of CHI'09, ACM, New York, NY, 1799--1808.

Digital Library

[26]

Kostadin Kushlev, Jason Proulx, and Elizabeth W. Dunn. 2016. Silence Your Phones: Smartphone Notifications Increase Inattention and Hyperactivity Symptoms. Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1011--1020. ACM.

Digital Library

[27]

K. A. Latorella, 1998. Effects of modality on interrupted flight deck performance: Implications for data link. 42nd Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 87--91.

[28]

Nilli Lavie. Attention, distraction, and cognitive control under load. 2010. Current Directions in Psychological Science 19, no. 3: 143--148.

[29]

Sophie Leroy. 2009. Why is it so hard to do my work? The challenge of attention residue when switching between work tasks. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 109(2), 168--181.

[30]

P. Maglio, and C. S. Campbell. 2000. Tradeoffs in Displaying Peripheral Information. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM Press. 241--248.

Digital Library

[31]

Gloria Mark, Shamsi Iqbal, Mary Czerwinski, Paul Johns, and Akane Sano, 2016. Email Duration, Batching and Self-interruption: Patterns of Email Use on Productivity and Stress. Proceeding of CHI'16, ACM Press, 1717--1728.

Digital Library

[32]

Gloria Mark, Shamsi T. Iqbal, Mary Czerwinski, Paul Johns, and Akane Sano. 2016. Neurotics can't focus: An in situ study of online multitasking in the workplace. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM Press, 1739--1744.

Digital Library

[33]

Gloria Mark, Shamsi Iqbal, Mary Czerwinski, and Paul Johns. 2015. Focused, Aroused, but so Distractible: Temporal Perspectives on Multitasking and Communications. Proceedings of CSCW '15, ACM, New York, NY, USA, 903--916.

Digital Library

[34]

Gloria Mark, Shamsi Iqbal, Mary Czerwinski, and Paul Johns. 2014. Capturing the mood: Facebook and faceto-face encounters in the workplace. In Proceedings of CSCW '14, ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1082--1094.

Digital Library

[35]

Gloria Mark, Stephen Voida, and Armand Cardello. 2012. A pace not dictated by electrons: an empirical study of work without email. Proceedings of CHI'12, ACM Press, New York, NY, USA, 555--564.

Digital Library

[36]

Gloria Mark, Daniela Gudith, and Ulrich Klocke. 2008. The cost of interrupted work: more speed and stress. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM Press. 107--110.

Digital Library

[37]

Robert R. McCrae and Paul T. Costa Jr., 1999. A fivefactor theory of personality. Handbook of personality: Theory and research 2 (1999): 139--153.

[38]

Daniel McFarlane. 2002. Comparison of four primary methods for coordinating the interruptions of people in human-computer interaction. Human-Computer Interaction, 17(1), 1--61.

Digital Library

[39]

Christopher Monk, Gregory Trafton, and Deborah A. Boehm-Davis, 2008. The effect of interruption duration and demand on resuming suspended goals. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied 14, no. 4 (2008): 299.

[40]

Kenneth Olmstead, Cliff Lampe, and Nicole Ellison, 2016. Social media and the workplace. Pew Research Center. Retrieved on April 15, 2017.

[41]

Eyal Ophir, Clifford Nass, and Anthony D. Wagner. 2009. Cognitive control in media multitaskers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106.37: 15583--15587.

[42]

Marily Oppezzo and Daniel L Schwartz. 2014. Give your ideas some legs: The positive effect of walking on creative thinking. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 40, 4, 1142--1152.

[43]

Martin Pielot and Luz Rello. 2017. Productive, anxious, lonely: 24 hours without push notifications. Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI '17). ACM, New York, NY.

Digital Library

[44]

Martin Pielot and Luz Rello. 2015. The do not disturb challenge: a day without notifications. Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM Press. 1761--1766.

Digital Library

[45]

Pomodoro technique. 2016. Retrieved 2016. http://pomodorotechnique.com/

[46]

Mark Rouncefield, John A. Hughes, Tom Rodden, and Stephen Viller, 1994. Working with "constant interruption": CSCW and the small office." Proceedings of CSCW'94, ACM Press. 275--286.

Digital Library

[47]

RescueTime. 2016. Retrieved 2016. https://www.rescuetime.com/

[48]

Anya Skatova, Ben Bedwell, Victoria Shipp, Yitong Huang, Alexandra Young, Tom Rodden, and Emma Bertenshaw, 2016. The Role of ICT in Office Work Breaks. Proceedings of CHI'16, ACM Press.30493060.

Digital Library

[49]

StayFocused. 2016. Retrieved 2016 from http://www.stayfocusedapp.me/.

[50]

J. P. Trougakos, D. J. Beal, S. J. Green, S. J., and H. M. Weiss. 2008. Making the break count: An episodic examination of recovery activities, emotional experiences, and positive affective displays. Academy of Management Journal, 51, 131--146.

[51]

Webster, J. and Ho, H. Audience engagement in multimedia presentations. Data Base for the Advancement in Information Systems, 1997, 28 (2). 63--77.

Digital Library

[52]

Steve Whittaker, Vaiva Kalnikaite, Victoria Hollis, & Andrew Guydish. 2016. 'Don't Waste My Time': Use of Time Information Improves Focus. Proceedings of CHI'16, ACM Press, 1729--1738.

Digital Library

[53]

S. P. Whiteside and D. R. Lynam, D. R. 2001. The Five Factor Model and impulsivity: using a structural model of personality to understand impulsivity. Personality and Individual Differences, 30(4), 669--689

[54]

Christopher D.Wickens. 1980. The structure of attentional resources. Atten and performance VIII, 8.

Cited By

Hu DBhuiyan MLim SWiese JLee S(2024)Unpacking Task Management Tools, Values, and Worker DynamicsProceedings of the 3rd Annual Meeting of the Symposium on Human-Computer Interaction for Work10.1145/3663384.3663402(1-16)Online publication date: 25-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3663384.3663402
Williams ABai MBuck JMckinney TRechkemmer AKalyanaraman KLease MHaffner PZhou XLi E(2024)Snapper: Accelerating Bounding Box Annotation in Object Detection Tasks with Find-and-Snap ToolingProceedings of the 29th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces10.1145/3640543.3645162(471-488)Online publication date: 18-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3640543.3645162
Lyngs ULukoff KSlovak PInzlicht MFreed MAndrews HTinsman CCsuka LAlberts LOldemburgo De Mello VMakransky GHornbæk KVan Kleek MShadbolt N(2024)“I finally felt I had the tools to control these urges”: Empowering Students to Achieve Their Device Use Goals With the Reduce Digital Distraction WorkshopProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642946(1-23)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642946
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Effects of Individual Differences in Blocking Workplace Distractions
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Collaborative and social computing
2. Social and professional topics
  1. Computing / technology policy

Recommendations

Email Duration, Batching and Self-interruption: Patterns of Email Use on Productivity and Stress
CHI '16: Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

While email provides numerous benefits in the workplace, it is unclear how patterns of email use might affect key workplace indicators of productivity and stress. We investigate how three email use patterns: duration, interruption habit, and batching, ...
TimeToFocus: Feedback on Interruption Durations Discourages Distractions and Shortens Interruptions

Many computer tasks involve looking up information from different sources, and these self-interruptions can be disruptive. In this article, we investigate whether giving people feedback on how long they are away from their task influences their self-...
How blocking distractions affects workplace focus and productivity
UbiComp '17: Proceedings of the 2017 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing and Proceedings of the 2017 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers

Information workers are faced with ever-increasing online distractions in the workplace. Website blockers are one solution toward preventing unwanted distractions. We conducted an in situ field study with 32 information workers in their workplace to ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

CHI '18: Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 2018

8489 pages

ISBN:9781450356206

DOI:10.1145/3173574

General Chairs:
Regan Mandryk
University of Saskatchewan, Canada
,
Mark Hancock
University of Waterloo, Canada
,
Program Chairs:
Mark Perry
Brunel University London, UK
,
Anna Cox
University College London, UK

Copyright © 2018 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

Sponsors

SIGCHI: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 19 April 2018

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Funding Sources

National Science Foundation

Conference

CHI '18

Sponsor:

SIGCHI

CHI '18: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 21 - 26, 2018

Montreal QC, Canada

Acceptance Rates

CHI '18 Paper Acceptance Rate 666 of 2,590 submissions, 26%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 6,199 of 26,314 submissions, 24%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

62
Total Citations
View Citations
3,767
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)659
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)93

Reflects downloads up to 14 Sep 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Hu DBhuiyan MLim SWiese JLee S(2024)Unpacking Task Management Tools, Values, and Worker DynamicsProceedings of the 3rd Annual Meeting of the Symposium on Human-Computer Interaction for Work10.1145/3663384.3663402(1-16)Online publication date: 25-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3663384.3663402
Williams ABai MBuck JMckinney TRechkemmer AKalyanaraman KLease MHaffner PZhou XLi E(2024)Snapper: Accelerating Bounding Box Annotation in Object Detection Tasks with Find-and-Snap ToolingProceedings of the 29th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces10.1145/3640543.3645162(471-488)Online publication date: 18-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3640543.3645162
Lyngs ULukoff KSlovak PInzlicht MFreed MAndrews HTinsman CCsuka LAlberts LOldemburgo De Mello VMakransky GHornbæk KVan Kleek MShadbolt N(2024)“I finally felt I had the tools to control these urges”: Empowering Students to Achieve Their Device Use Goals With the Reduce Digital Distraction WorkshopProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642946(1-23)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642946
Ferguson SMassimi M(2024)Circle Back Next Week: The Effect of Meeting-Free Weeks on Distributed Workers’ Unstructured Time and Attention NegotiationProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642175(1-17)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642175
Verlinden ABaillien ENotelaers GVerbruggen M(2024)Always on? Development and validation of the Employee Digital Disconnection Scale (EDDS)Work & Stress10.1080/02678373.2024.2364597(1-27)Online publication date: 13-Jun-2024
https://doi.org/10.1080/02678373.2024.2364597
Adewoyin OWesson JVogts D(2024)The PBC model: promoting positive behaviours through change-based interventionsCognition, Technology & Work10.1007/s10111-024-00776-4Online publication date: 16-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10111-024-00776-4
Lingler ATalypova DDraxler FSchneegass CDingler TWintersberger P(2023)MuM'23 Workshop on Interruptions and Attention ManagementProceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia10.1145/3626705.3626706(548-551)Online publication date: 3-Dec-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3626705.3626706
Chow KFritz THolsti LBarbic SMcGrenere J(2023)Feeling Stressed and Unproductive? A Field Evaluation of a Therapy-Inspired Digital Intervention for Knowledge WorkersACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/360933031:1(1-33)Online publication date: 29-Nov-2023
https://doi.org/10.1145/3609330
Petihakis GKiritsis DFarao ABountakas PPanou AXenakis C(2023)A Bring Your Own Device security awareness survey among professionalsProceedings of the 18th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security10.1145/3600160.3605072(1-10)Online publication date: 29-Aug-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3600160.3605072
Roffarello ADe Russis L(2023)Achieving Digital Wellbeing Through Digital Self-control Tools: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysisACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/357181030:4(1-66)Online publication date: 12-Sep-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3571810
Show More Cited By

View Options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Get Access

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents