Barbie, Bowl Games & Beyoncé Distract Us: 6 Ways To Beat Distractions That Kill Productivity

What do Barbie, the Super Bowl and Beyoncé have in common? They distract us at work.

And we need to beat distractions to get everything done. Every day.

Of course, we can’t just blame movies, sporting events and an R&B star for distractions. But there will always be something.

And it adds up: More than 90% of employees admit they get distracted at least once a work day, according to a survey by Workamajig. A quarter of employees say they get distracted from work six times a day! And it takes about 10 minutes to recover from any distraction.

“Despite its dominance in our cultural discourse, scientific studies show that the brain is incapable of doing two things simultaneously,” says Esther Cohen, Director of Marketing at Workamajig. “The end result is a ‘task-switching penalty’ as the brain adjusts to the new task. If you do this over and over again, you essentially tax your brain under a massive cognitive load. This affects your productivity negatively.”

We just can’t get as much done when our minds or mouths wander.

Difficult to Beat Distractions

Barbie was the top pop culture distraction in 2023. But what else had us avoiding work then? Beyoncé and Taylor Swift concerts, the Super Bowl, NBA Finals and FIFA Women’s World Cup, Workamajig found.

Those are the rarer problems with productivity, though. For the most part, pop culture pulls people away from work for about a half hour.

So what derails us most? More than half of people working in offices say chatty co-workers are the biggest distraction that impedes productivity, the Workamajig study found. Behind that is excessive office noise, office gossip, internet browsing and multi-tasking.

It’s tough to beat distractions, considering they’re everywhere all the time.

But we have some remedies — whether you need them or want to pass them on to your staff when productivity slips (or better, before it slips).

6 Tips to Beat Distractions

Here’s why we need help beating distractions: We just can’t make them go away entirely.

You’ll see some of these tips might eliminate one kind of distraction, but there’s always another kind lurking nearby.

So, the first tip is to:

1. Identify your biggest distraction. For some, it’s those pop culture and gossip prompts with co-workers. And for goodness sake, whether you’re a lover or hater, nearly everyone has something to say about Taylor Swift, football and the frenzy that follows them. Meanwhile, some of us lose productivity because we try to do too much at once — aka multi-tasking. So, take a day and note what pulls you from the work you want to get done. From there:
2. Manage notifications. You can’t always stop people from interrupting your work, but you can control how notifications, pop-ups and other digital distractions affect you. Switch Slack, email and other work or social notifications off. Turn on “Do Not Disturb” mode when you need to work on critical tasks. 
3. Fix a schedule for checking the inbox. Checking email and other communication apps multiple times an hour causes unnecessary and excessive task-switching. Use your signature line to let others know when you check-in so they know when to expect a response. And then, most importantly, stick to those check-in times.
4. Take scheduled breaks. A University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign study found brief diversions can improve focus, productivity and effectiveness when you’re on task. Ideally, you work for about 50 minutes and break 10-15. That break could include some of the distractions you might otherwise fall victim to, such as internet scrolling. But keep a timer on that!
5. Cross an easy task off your to-do early and quickly. Then, once you’re focused, you can work toward bigger, more daunting tasks. The momentum will make you less susceptible to distractions.
6. Resist the urge to multitask. “The prescription for this problem is simple: stop multitasking. Instead, adopt the practice of ‘single-tasking’ — devote your complete attention to a single task,” says Cohen. When possible, create a space, time and setting where colleagues or physical interruptions can’t interfere with that single task.