Yesterday I forgot my iPhone.
It wasn't until I got to my bus stop that I realized I had left it on my night table.
Too late to go home and get it. So I spent the day without it.
In Sunday's "Times" there was an op-ed titled "Brain, Interrupted." It focused on distraction. The distractions we are all buffeted by. Article
In it I found this startling statistic that was originally discerned by Gloria Mark of the University of California, Irvine. Mark found that the typical office worker goes 11 minutes without being interrupted. That is, if you're writing copy, you get interrupted about once every sentence.
That's bad enough. And a compelling argument against the abject stupidity of an open-plan workspace.
But it gets worse.
It takes, according to Mark and average of 25 minutes to return to your task after an interruption.
You've done it.
You're busy with something.
Someone interrupts with a question.
And instead of going right back to your task, you check your email, or your Facebook, or every other form of social media known to man.
Yesterday, phoneless, I had fewer interruptions.
It was a very productive day.
But today I am once again bound like Prometheus.
Chained to a rock.
With a hawk eating away at my liver.
