Time pressure can have a surprisingly positive effect on our productivity, especially when it comes to reducing ‘attention residue’. Attention residue occurs when we struggle to completely let go of our thoughts from a completed task, making it harder to fully concentrate on the next task. Research has shown that when people complete a task under high time pressure, they experience less attention residue. This is because the urgency and focus associated with time pressure help us to fully direct our attention to the task and let go of it more easily after completion.
While time pressure can sometimes be stressful, it can also be a useful tool to improve our productivity. It helps us stay focused and prevents us from dwelling on thoughts about completed tasks. This means we can switch between tasks more quickly and effectively, ultimately leading to higher overall efficiency and better performance.
Related:
- Before you start (a task, a work session, a project…), set a time budget
- Avoid excessive task switching to increase efficiency
- Link the desired behavior to a clear signal
- Attempting to do two or more attention-demanding tasks simultaneously reduces productivity
- Workers lose 9% of their time at work by toggling roughly 1200 times per day between applications and websites
- Although time pressure makes us work faster, it does not automatically mean we work better
- Singletasking
