00WHAT THE RESEARCH SAYS

Quiet the phone,
keep the thought.

A tidy wooden desk by a window with an open notebook and a pen, and a smartphone lying face down at the far edge of the desk — AI-generated image, not a photograph of a real person or place.

A buzz can cost you even if you ignore it.

Studies of phone alerts, office interruptions and media multitasking point the same way: attention is easily pulled off course, and getting back takes longer than it feels.

ALERTS OFFphone out of reachUpdated 14 October 2026

Check your setup

01Principles

Fewer alerts
Phone out of reach
One stream at a time
Small changes, steadier focus

02THE SHORT ANSWER

Attention is easy to pull,
slow to bring back.

The cost is not only the time you spend replying.
It is the thought you lose along the way.

ALERTS

A buzz is enough

In a 2015 study, phone notifications alone significantly disrupted an attention task, even when people did not touch their phones.

See the numbers

INTERRUPTIONS

Getting back takes time

Observing office workers, a University of California, Irvine researcher found interrupted work was resumed after 23 minutes on average.

Check your setup

DISTANCE

Out of reach helps

Students who spent a week with alerts off and phones away reported less inattention than in a week with alerts on.

How to try it

03A QUICK SETUP CHECK

Where is your phone
while you work?

Pick the setup closest to yours to see what studies found. The bar shows how strongly the research links that setup to a cost in attention.

Based on published studies of attention and phone use. This is general information, not medical advice.

Focus check

Choose a setupAlerts off, phone put awaySeveral screens and streams at onceAlerts on, but not answeringReplying as messages arrive

Alerts off, phone put awaySteadier

In a study of 221 students, people reported significantly less inattention and hyperactivity in the week with alerts off and phones away than in the week with alerts on.

Several screens and streams at onceLinked to distraction

A Stanford study of about 100 students found heavy media multitaskers were worse at ignoring irrelevant information and at switching between tasks.

Alerts on, but not answeringStill disruptive

Notifications alone significantly disrupted performance on an attention task, even when people did not interact with a phone, according to a 2015 study.

Replying as messages arriveCostly

The 2015 study found the disruption from alerts was comparable to actively using a phone for calls or texts. In office studies, interrupted work took 23 minutes on average to resume.

Sources: Stothart, Mitchum and Yehnert (2015); Kushlev, Proulx and Dunn (University of Virginia news); Ophir, Nass and Wagner (Stanford, 2009); Mark (UC Irvine, 2008).

04TWO NUMBERS WORTH KNOWING

Plenty of screen time,
slow way back.

One figure on how much time we spend online,
one on how long a broken task takes to resume.

4½ hours

UK adults online each day

Ofcom reported in December 2025 that UK adults spend an average of four and a half hours online a day, up by 10 minutes on the year before, with most of that time on a smartphone.

TIME ONLINE · OFCOM

23 min

Average time to resume interrupted work

Gloria Mark's observations of office work found interrupted tasks were resumed after 23 minutes and 15 seconds on average, and people spent about 3 minutes on a task before switching or being interrupted.

RESUMING WORK · UC IRVINE

In Mark's experiment, interrupted people finished faster but reported significantly higher stress, frustration, time pressure and effort. Speed is not the whole cost.

05FOUR HABITS TO TRY

Protect the thought,
not just the time.

None of these needs an app. They follow directly from what the studies changed or measured: alerts, distance and the number of streams you juggle.

Turn alerts off for a block of work
Sounds and vibrations can pull your mind away even when you do not respond to them.
Put the phone out of reach
In the University of Virginia study, the calmer week combined alerts off with the phone put away.
Keep one stream open
Close the extra tabs, chats and videos while you do work that needs your full attention.
Leave yourself a note
If you must stop, jot down your next step. Interrupted work often waits a long time before you pick it up again.

A smartphone placed in a drawer that is half closed, with a laptop and a cup of tea on the desk above it — AI-generated image, not a photograph of a real person or place.

06WHY A BUZZ MATTERS

The thought
goes wandering.

A smartphone lighting up with a notification on a desk beside a person's hands writing in a notebook — AI-generated image, not a photograph of a real person or place.

A notification lasts a second, but the 2015 researchers noted it can prompt task-irrelevant thoughts, or mind wandering, which has been shown to harm performance.

That is why the effect showed up even when people never looked at their phones. The most reliable fix the studies point to is removing the prompt itself: fewer alerts, and the phone somewhere you cannot easily reach.

07Questions

Questions people ask

Do notifications hurt focus if I ignore them?

A 2015 study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology found that notifications alone significantly disrupted performance on an attention task, even when people did not interact with their phones.

Is checking a message as bad as a call?

In that study, the distraction from a notification was comparable in size to the effect of actively using a phone for voice calls or text messaging.

How long does it take to get back to work after an interruption?

In Gloria Mark's observations of office workers at UC Irvine, interrupted work was resumed after 23 minutes and 15 seconds on average, and 81.9% was resumed the same day.

Are people who multitask a lot better at it?

Not in a 2009 Stanford study. Heavy media multitaskers were worse at filtering out irrelevant information and at switching between tasks than light multitaskers.

Does turning notifications off actually help?

A study of 221 students found they reported significantly more inattention and hyperactivity in a week with alerts on than in a week with alerts off and phones away.

08Sources

Quiet the phone,
keep the thought.