Inbox Outfoxed: The Distraction Every BCBA Experiences...But Might Not Address
I recently came across an interesting article. A group of researchers at Harvard studied the relationship between focus and happiness, discovering that almost half of our thoughts are unrelated to our current activities. The other finding, however, blew my mind.
Using an iPhone app that periodically surveyed people's thoughts and activities to study happiness in real-world settings, they showed that people are happiest when their thoughts and actions are aligned, even during mundane tasks. Mental presence, rather than the activity itself, is a better predictor of happiness. A wandering mind…in other words…is an unhappy one.
This is highly pertinent to BCBAs!
BCBAs deal with a great deal of distraction everyday that pulls their mind away from one thing and requires them to attend to another (or many others). That means most of us are distracted and our minds are wandering, which likely promotes a general dissatisfaction with the way things are going.
It seems imperative, then, that we think more about the things that are distracting us when we’re working. Developing strategies to control and curb for these distractions becomes essential. As a field, we’ve done a great job talking about the dissatisfaction regarding our job. But we haven’t done a great job talking about the distractions of our job…which are of great abundance. Nor have we come up with any strategies to remedy this possible dissatisfaction that distractions might be responsible for.
Yet, if the remedy to this involves focus and engagement, then we have to figure out ways for those things to happen.
So, I’m going take a stab.
As far as I can tell there are several "distractions” or “phenomena” or whatever you want to call it, that significantly impacts a BCBA’s tendency to become distracted in the first place. Today I’m going to talk about one that stands out above all others.
Electronic communication. A noteworthy distracting that stands out in clinical settings, and in various other contexts, is electronic communication. Text messages and emails, in particular, can easily take one's mind away from the present moment. Imagine you are in a consultation with a child. You keep your email tab open on your browser at all times. You open up the tab and see several emails from fellow staff members asking questions or reporting back to you on problematic behavior for their clients. While this type of communication can be important, in many cases, it’s not an emergency. However, despite the fact that you’re in consultation with a different client, you decide to oblige them and respond to each email in a thoughtful fashion.
That was nice of you.
But it wasn’t nice for the learner you were supposed to be concentrating on.
It wasn’t nice for that learner’s RBT who had several questions of their own, but noticed that you were frantically typing away.
Finally, it wasn’t nice for your brain, who—if you’re just now tuning in—is more angry and distracted than it was before.
We have to notice that hanging around in our inbox often comes at the cost of splitting our attention and causes our minds to wander. If happiness is linked to a focused mind, an insistence on checking email at every minute of every day may lead to decreased happiness in the present moment.
Traffic.
When talking about this, I often analogize my email inbox with traffic that is at stand still. Imagine that each email represents a car, beeping loudly, muddled together with all the other cars. The more exclamation marks in the subject line, the louder the horn. Now, imagine that we introduce a very playful dog that loves chasing cars. Imagine turning a dog like this loose in stalled traffic on a busy city street? What would it do? It would chase cars for hours, running in circles around each vehicle going absolutely nuts!
In this analogy, our mind is the dog. If we let it, our mind will chase emails and text messages in the same way this dog loves chasing cars in circles…all…day.
Yet, we voluntarily introduce this "traffic” into our consultations. We end up distracting and neutralizing the very thing (our brain) that helps us solve important clinical problems.
So what do we do about it?
One way to combat the distraction of electronic communication is to establish boundaries for checking text messages and emails while engaged in another task. It's understandable that you may want to stay updated with family matters, especially during emergencies. I’m not suggesting that you put your phone away completely. However, it's essential to minimize unnecessary interactions.
A practical solution is to schedule specific times for checking emails, making phone calls, and responding to text messages. Allocate dedicated time slots for these activities. Then stick to it. For me, I prefer to check electronic communication at the start of my day, right before lunch, and an hour or so before I leave.
By sticking with this approach, you usually discover a few things. First, you’ll notice that things don’t fall apart in the way you thin it will. Most emails received within a two or three-hour period are not urgent and don't require an immediate response if they require a response at all. If it were incredibly serious, the individual likely would have called you!
Second, you’ll also note sharper decision making. Without interruptions, you’re free to concentrate on the learner and the task at hand. As such, you’re seeing the big picture which can impact learner progress and staff satisfaction right away. Your brain isn’t spread into trying to attend and solve for many things. Instead, its directed towards one thing—the task at hand.
Finally, you’ll be a little happier. Doing the thing that you set out to do—not checking emails—yields a great deal of satisfaction.
Of course, none of this will take away workplace stress completely. There are a slew of variables that contribute to stress as a whole. But email is frequently cited as one of those variables. And, like everything else we seek to achieve in our lives, we take it one step (or variable) at a time.
What distractions do you commonly see in the clinical setting? What seems to pull you away from what you’re doing? Hit me back and let me know.
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