Attention Residue: Why the Next Task Gets Half of You
Attention residue is the part of your mind still stuck on the task you just left. A short note on where you stopped, written before you switch, frees it up for whatever comes next.
Attention residue is why the two o'clock call gets a thinner version of you: part of your mind is still drafting the proposal you dropped at 1:58.
Sophie Leroy named it in 2009. In 2018, she and Theresa Glomb ran four studies on when the residue gets heavier and what lightens it.
It got heavier when people expected to return to the interrupted task under time pressure. A deadline waiting on the other side keeps the mind guarding the old work.
The fix was small. People who took a moment to note where they stood in the interrupted task, and planned their return, carried less residue into the new one. Their performance on the new task held up. Once the old work has a written place to resume from, the mind can stop holding it.
You can't stop interruptions. You can make leaving cleaner.
The nudge: Before you answer the interruption, write two lines on the task you're leaving: "Stopped at: ___. Next: ___." Then switch.
Source: Leroy, 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 (2009); Leroy & Glomb, Tasks interrupted: How anticipating time pressure on resumption of an interrupted task causes attention residue and low performance on interrupting tasks and how a "ready-to-resume" plan mitigates the effects, Organization Science (2018)
