Frequent Workplace Interruptions Are Annoying — But May Also Help You Feel That You Belong

By Emma Young Workplace disturbances during the Covid-19 pandemic aren’t quite what they used to be. Now you’re more likely to be interrupted by a cat jumping on your keyboard or a partner trying to make a cup of tea while you’re in a meeting — but if you can cast your mind back to what it was like to work in an office, perhaps you can recall how annoying it was to be disturbed by colleagues dropping by with questions or comments. These “workplace intrusions” used to be common in offices, and no doubt will be again. There’s certainly plenty of evidence that they interfere with our ability to complete tasks, and that we can find them stressful. However, no one’s really considered potential benefits, note Harshad Puranik at the University of Illinois and colleagues. In their new paper in the Journal of Advanced Psychology, the team reports that though there is a dark side to these interruptions, there’s a bright side, too.  Before the pandemic, Puranik and his colleagues studied 111 people with an average age of about 35 who worked full time. At around noon every work day for three weeks, these participants used simple scales to report any work intrusions (such as being interrupted by someone who wanted to ask questions or to assign them a new task); their stocks of willpower for self-regulation (reporting on their level of agreement with “I feel drained right now”, for example); their sense of how connected they felt with other...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Occupational Social Source Type: blogs