The cost of interrupted work

People compensate for interruptions by working faster, but this comes at a price.

This is the latest issue of my newsletter. Each week I cover the latest research and perspectives on developer productivity.

Join us on April 3rd: DX’s CTO, Laura Tacho, is hosting a live discussion with Nathen Harvey (DORA) on when not to use the DORA metrics.

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This week I read The Cost of Interrupted Work: More Speed and Stress, a paper by Gloria Mark, Daniel Gudith, and Ulrich Klocke. This study investigated the effects of interruptions on work performance. 

Surprisingly, this study found that interruptions actually push people to complete tasks faster. But there's a catch – they also increase stress, frustration, time pressure, and effort. 

My summary of the paper 

The researchers set out to measure the impact of interruptions on how quickly and effectively people can perform tasks. They also looked at whether the context of interruptions makes them more or less disruptive. 

To answer these questions, they asked a group of participants to complete a given task of writing and responding to a number of emails in a simulated office environment. Participants were periodically interrupted by a "supervisor" with questions, which they had to address immediately. The researchers then measured how quickly and accurately the participants completed their tasks. This was compared to a control group that didn't face any interruptions.

Here’s what they found: 

Interruptions push people to work faster

The first question was whether it matters if the interruption is related to the task at hand or not. The researchers found that this does matter: their study showed a significant difference between interruptions types and their impact on time to perform the task. “Different context” interruptions cause tasks to take longer. 

Surprisingly, they also found that participants who were interrupted completed the task faster than those without interruptions. The interruption context didn’t matter. The researchers thought this might be because people who were uninterrupted wrote longer emails, and they were right: participants with no interruptions wrote the longest emails. There was no significant difference, however, between the number of errors made. This suggests that while uninterrupted participants might put more time and effort into their emails, potentially making them higher quality (we don’t know - the study didn’t explore this), their accuracy was no better than that of participants who were interrupted.

They also cause more stress 

During the study, participants gave feedback on their stress levels, frustration, effort, and the sense of time pressure they felt after tasks. These measures (stress, frustration, etc) are collectively considered mental workload measures. 

The analysis shows a significant difference in mental workload across interruption types: the participants who were interrupted had higher levels of stress, frustration, effort, and time pressure than those who were not interrupted. 

These results suggest that interruptions lead people to change not only work rhythms but also strategies and mental states. People compensate for being interrupted with a faster and more stressful working style. 

The authors offer their interpretation of the results from this study: 

“When people are constantly interrupted, they develop a mode of working faster (and writing less) to compensate for the time they know they will lose by being interrupted. Yet working faster with interruptions has its cost: people in the interrupted conditions experienced a higher workload, more stress, higher frustration, more time pressure, and effort. So interrupted work may be done faster, but at a price.” 

Final thoughts

This study provides another perspective on the impact of interruptions. Instinct might say that interruptions cause delays, but this study shows that people actually complete tasks more quickly when interrupted, albeit at the expense of increased stress and frustration. 

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Who’s hiring right now

Here’s a roundup of new Developer Experience job openings:

• Netflix is hiring a Technical Program Manager (L5/L6) - Platform | Remote (US)

• Plaid is hiring a Product Manager for their Developer Platform team | San Francisco

• Rocket Money is hiring a Team Leader, Engineering Performance & Developer Experience | Various cities or remote (US)

• SiriusXM is hiring a Senior Technical Product Manager - Platform Engineering | Various cities (US)

• Skydio is hiring a Senior Software Engineer - Developer Productivity | San Francisco

• Uber is hiring a Senior Staff Engineer - Developer Platform (Gen AI) | San Francisco, Seattle

Find more DevEx job postings here.

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-Abi