It’s fairly well established that distractions are killers to our productivity. Indeed, a few years ago, a study from the University of California Irvine showed that it takes around 23 minutes to regain our focus from each distraction we face.

That study was conducted in the typical office environment, and it prompted many to argue that the remote work environment was much better for our focus as we experience fewer distractions from our colleagues.

A distracted workplace

This wasn’t the case during the pandemic, where we would often have multiple people trying to work from home, while many also had children trying to homeschool, maybe even relatives who needed caring for.

Research from the University of Michigan explores just what happens when we get distracted. In a nod to the challenges invoked by remote working, the researchers focused on the kind of family challenges that were so common during the pandemic. They found that we often employ our working memory to help grapple with those distractions.

While this helps to tackle the family-related challenges, it has an inevitable impact on our work as we’re redeploying mental resources from one task to the other.

The researchers examined data from over 2,500 people, who shared details about their work and home life. They looked at the demands of their work, the resources they had available to them, and any family issues they encountered over the past year.

To test their working memory, each of the participants was given a few sets of numbers that they were asked to repeat backward. The sets started with two digits and got longer, up to eight digits.

Working memory

The study showcases the important role working memory plays. This is our ability to hold various bits of information simultaneously in our minds at one time. It allows us to grapple with any intrusive thoughts and distractions that may pop into our head and strive to maintain a degree of focus on the task at hand.

“Thus, working memory is required to ensure that if distractions intrude, individuals can maintain focus amidst those distractions,” the researchers explain.

They cite a range of family life distractions that will be familiar to anyone who worked remotely during the pandemic, including caring for children, being responsive to a spouse, or even keeping up with regular household chores.

“The best many of us can hope for is to keep thoughts of family and home life at bay and out of mind so that we can focus on our work for a few hours,” the authors continue.

Mental spillover

The study revealed, however, that this doesn’t always occur, and that many people reported experiencing some kind of family problems over the past twelve months, with this in turn, resulting in them feeling that their work was more demanding.

With their mental energies diverted by family difficulties, these people were subsequently more likely to report that their job was challenging. No such challenges were reported among those whose mental reserves remained high, such as when there were minimal family problems to overcome.

Of course, the pandemic gave us plenty of opportunities to test how this unfolded in reality. Did it result in lower productivity levels as our mental resources were stretched in various directions? Not really. Indeed, research showed that in many instances, productivity actually rose, not least as the lack of a commute gave people more time and control to manage their work/life balance.

Productive from home

This was further reinforced by the University of Southampton’s Work After Lockdown study, which aimed to take a more objective look at the productivity of remote workers during the pandemic.

The researchers asked more than 1,000 people how they’ve been getting work done from home. Instead of just looking at the hours they put in, the survey measured how much they accomplished every hour.

The results showed that 54% of people felt they were getting more done per hour during the pandemic compared to before. When you add in those who felt their productivity stayed the same, almost 90% thought they were doing just as well or better while working remotely. This lines up with what other studies have found about the benefits of remote work.

The survey also looked into how working from home affects people’s mental health. They used a tool called the WHO-5 index to rate participants. It turned out that those who were more productive also tended to have better mental health.

The researchers found that those employees with greater resilience were better able to manage the various distractions and stressors they encountered, and were more productive as a result of their ability to better focus on the task at hand.

So, remote work can reduce productivity if we succumb to the various distractions that remote working can throw at us, but if we develop our resilience, we’re able to successfully bat those distractions away and be more productive as a result. Perhaps food for thought for those managers “still” debating whether remote working is good or not.