Batch tasks and go on an information diet

Process email and news in scheduled batches rather than reacting to them continuously.

Why it works

Continuous partial attention — scanning for new information all day — interrupts deep work, imposes switching costs, and creates a treadmill of urgency that is cognitively expensive without proportional benefit. Batching collapses a stream of micro-interruptions into one or two focused processing sessions, freeing attention blocks for higher-value work and rest.

How to do it

1. Set two fixed times per day for email and messages — morning and mid-afternoon, for instance.
2. Close notifications entirely between those windows.
3. Assess news and social feeds: is each source improving your decisions? If not, cut it.
4. For one week, consume zero news and notice what actually required you to know it.

Evidence

Attention residue research shows that even brief interruptions impair performance on a subsequent task; reducing notification-driven interruptions is consistent with that mechanism. (observational)

The batching strategy is practitioner-developed; attention residue research supports the underlying mechanism but the specific "two checks per day" threshold is a heuristic, not an empirically optimized number.

Sources

• Leroy (2009), attention residue and task switching, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

Common mistake

Batching email but leaving Slack, social media, and news notifications running continuously, which preserves the interruption problem while only reducing one channel.