Feature
Productivity and project management tools are supposed to help teams collaborate and work more efficiently, but constant alerts — an average of 80 to 200 per day in 2013, with experts estimating that figure has increased 50% since — distract workers all day whenever someone comments, revises or uploads information.
A 2023 study published in the Journal of Occupational Health revealed that the effects of frequent desktop or smartphone task interruptions — and the pressure to respond immediately, or else — affect performance and increase stress.
With the average company using several digital tools in today’s hyper-connected workplace, is the answer to this onslaught of notifications … more technology?
While most smartphones and apps allow you to disable notifications, and companies market software to cut down on alerts, the real problem is not which tools we use but how we work, said two leading experts. Here’s how leaders and employees can help each other overcome the overload.
When Collaboration Becomes Chaos
Instant messaging, email, team platforms and Zoom meetings can eat up between 85% to 90% of the work day, said Rob Cross, senior vice-president of research for i4cp and author of “Beyond Collaboration Overload: How to Work Smarter, Get Ahead and Restore Your Well-Being.”
“We've seen the collaborative footprint of work go up about 50% in the past 15 years. It's not so much the work that's gone up, it's the way we have to collaborate to get the work done in these more technology-enabled structures, and nobody’s paying attention to that,” said Cross.
Cross’ book focuses on organizational network analysis — understanding how collaboration happens in large organizations. He predicts that moving forward, organizations will use this technique to understand how work gets done today so leaders can make better decisions on role design and priorities.
“But right now, leaders are just shooting blindly and throwing too much at people because they don't understand that the collaborative demands to execute the work have risen so much,” he said.
Technologies get thrown at people, and because everybody uses them differently, time is wasted.
Related Podcast: Collaboration Overload Is Crushing Innovation at Your Company
Uncovering the True Culprit
“Distraction is a symptom of cultural dysfunction. We blame the pings, dings and rings, but that's the symptom, not the disease,” said Singapore-based Nir Eyal, author of “Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life.”
“The disease is a sick corporate culture, where people can't say, ‘Hey, I have a problem. Can we talk about it?’ People think it's about going from this tool to that tool, but the problem is not the technology. The problem is we can't talk about the problem.”
In a workplace where everyone is supposed to be constantly on-call to respond to reminders, group chats and ‘urgent’ emails, employees need permission to work intentionally throughout the day, added Eyal.
In his book, he highlights the shared traits of several “indistractable organizations.”
“Number one, their employees have psychological safety — a term coined by Amy Edmondson at Harvard Business School — which is the ability to talk about your problems without fear of retribution,” Eyal explained.
Having that conversation in the moment is critical because it gets leaders to think and understand more about the collaborative aspects of their request, added Cross.
“Often, managers don't know how the demand flows down. The reality is if they just dump stuff and people keep saying yes, the work doesn’t always get done. It's burning people out, and they're leaving,” he said.
Related Article: Zoom Fatigue Continues, 3 Years Later. How Some Businesses Are Responding
Provide Space and Time to Solve Distractions
Eyal said leaders at “indistractible companies” also provide a forum where problems can be addressed and resolved. For example, when he visited Slack’s headquarters, he expected to encounter a highly distracted, 24/7-minded workforce. Instead, he found an organization that had put healthy boundaries in place for their team.
“On nights and weekends, if you use Slack, you are reprimanded. At 6:00 PM, their parking lot was empty. And in the company canteen, where all the employees gathered, there’s this huge pink neon sign that said, ‘Work hard and go home’,” said Eyal.
“I would argue it doesn't matter what tool is used. The problem is when your boss constantly expects you to be available or you’ll get fired, and you're going to look like a loser if you want to talk about it.”
Protect Your Employees’ Focus Time by Sharing Schedules
Employees lose sight of priorities and deliverables if they’re faced with excessive — and often competing — demands, including notifications, said Cross, citing research showing workers flip between apps or websites more than 1,200 times each day.
Conference
Sep
16
HR Tech Conference Las Vegas 2025
Register
Conference
Oct
27
Gartner HR Symposium/Xpo Orlando 2025
Register
The stress that accumulates over the workweek from what he calls “priority overload” can not only tank team success but also lead to increased rates of burnout and other mental health problems.
Schedule-syncs help leaders gain a better understanding of their staff’s typical workday, so they can avoid interrupting them mid-task. Even better, designate daily distraction-free times where everyone agrees not to send emails or messages, or book meetings.
Eyal suggests leaders encourage their teams to sync their calendars and block off time for focused work. He even includes a piece of card stock in his book that says “I’m indistractable; please come back later” that readers can tear out, fold and place over their computer monitors.
“When you put something on your computer that says, ‘Do not interrupt’, that's a signal,” said Eyal.
“Managers can set the precedent by saying, ‘It's okay to not be responsive all the time.’ We teach our workforce that there are two kinds of work: reactive work — reacting to notifications, messages, taps on the shoulder — and reflective work, which can only be done without distraction. We have to make time for reflective work, which involves planning, strategizing and creative thinking.”
Related Article: What Are Meetings Costing You?
Rethink the Technology That’s Already in Place
Constant disruptions take a toll on employees’ concentration, noted Cross. Even if everyone uses just one platform, they’re still likely switching across channels within that tool.
“Just the act of looking down at a text and back up is typically a 64-second loss. Studies show it takes that long to get fully back up to speed mentally on what you're doing,” he explained.
“If you start adding that up and everyone being instantaneously reactive to it, there's a lot that's lost not just in the volume of those interactions but across them in terms of inefficiency,” Cross said.
Instead, develop collaboration protocols, so everyone has a roadmap. For example, to identify where time is being lost, Cross suggests using the free resources on his website, like the Norms of Collaboration exercise: Draw two lines down a blank piece of paper to make three columns. In the first column, list the ways the team collaborates. The second column outlines three ways to best use each tool, such as creating strong subject lines or bullet points. The last column lists three things to stop doing like unnecessary CC-ing behavior or sending email at night.
“Don’t make this an exercise of the perfect hurting the good where you try to get all the norms in. Just get three positive ways you want to use the tool, three things you want to stop,” said Cross. “Deploying this through your teams gets everybody on the same page and often buys back 8% to 10% of people's time.”
Also, explore the “focus time” features on your workflow automation platforms. Most include options to mute, postpone or block notifications. Messaging apps allow users to display their availability, so colleagues know when to expect a response. Eyal suggests using the smartphone’s “Do not disturb while driving” mode.
“Nobody needs to know if you're driving or not. If they message or call you, an automatic reply says, ‘I can't talk right now. If this is urgent, text the word urgent.’ It’s genius, and everybody has it on their phone,” he said.
Model Behavior You Want to See
Want to save your team from notification overload? Try being indistractable yourself.
When Eyal delivers workshops, he often sees the same scene playing out in the conference room. “Who's the person in the back of the room on their phone the entire meeting? It's not the millennial looking at TikTok. It's the big boss,” he said.
“Culture flows downhill. When people see the boss constantly pecking at their phone and knowing those emails will come to them, that creates what we call the cycle of responsiveness: ‘If the boss is doing it, and that's how you get ahead, then I’ve got to be online.’”
Eyal said a shift in management style can help encourage productivity and allow staff to feel more comfortable about not jumping to respond every time an alert goes off.
Empower Your Team — and Yourself — to Opt Out
Cross said successful leaders are more reflective on their asks and more likely to encourage people to reprioritize in the moment instead of piling on more reminder messages. He found the employees — and leaders — who found more time in their workday were often the ones who ignored or at least postponed answering the barrage of alerts.
“Don't feel like you've got to be immediately responsive to every single thing,” said Cross. “The degree to which we are our own worst enemy is significant.”
