(From Forbes) -- Everyone knows how distracting life at the office has become. Midday yesterday I slacked off on my email and I now have 102 unread messages. The red light on my desktop phone is blazing, telling me I have voicemail waiting. There are two projects I should be doing, including one that involves compiling many disparate pieces of information and interviewing several business school professors. Then there are the personal tasks that compete for my attention, including a stack of health insurance papers I should file. And I don’t even sit in an open-plan office, as most workers do these days. I can shut my door.

Meantime, it’s my job to try to write stories that people will read from start to finish. How can I do that at a time when there are so many things competing for my audience’s attention? A piece today in The Wall Street Journal on workplace distraction cites academic studies showing that office workers get interrupted, or interrupt themselves, every three minutes. The Journal talked to Gloria Mark, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, who says it can take 23 minutes for a worker to get back to the task at hand after a distraction.

The Journal also discusses ways that companies are trying to help workers stay focused. One has reduced the number of projects employees take on at one time. Another has banned internal emails. Yet another tells its workers that they should use phone calls and in-person talks for urgent and complicated tasks and only use emails for matters that can wait. At eBay, Lacy Roberson, director of learning and organizational development, has made a rule that people can’t use devices during meetings. At a division of Intel, employees are trying a pilot program where they block out several hours a week for concentrated work, not responding to emails or going to meetings. The program has already produced a patent application.

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