Why capable people are feeling unproductive

Discover the productivity issue few are talking about

Have you ever reached the end of a work day and thought, "How can I be working this hard and getting so little done?"

You start the day with good intentions. You know exactly what needs to be done. You're busy from start to finish. Yet by 5pm, you’ve made little to no progress on that report, proposal or piece of work that really mattered.

If this sounds familiar, the issue may not be you. It might be the environment you're working in.

The digital workplace has transformed how we collaborate, communicate and get work done. Email, instant messaging, virtual meetings, shared documents and AI assistants have brought huge benefits. Work can now be completed, shared and refined faster than ever before.

And yet, despite having all these tools, many people finish the day feeling unproductive.

When old ways of working meet a new world

Not long ago, information arrived through a relatively small number of channels. This meant work was easier to keep track of and interruptions were generally less frequent.

Today, new requests, updates and reminders can appear at any moment. Information reaches us through emails, instant messages, task management tools and comments in shared documents.

As a result the working day has started to feel a little like a game of whack-a-mole.

One email is answered and another appears. A Teams message arrives while you're working on a report. Just as you regain focus, a meeting reminder pops up.

Individually, these interruptions may seem small. Collectively, they take a toll on both your cognitive capacity and your ability to complete meaningful work.

The hidden cost of constant switching

While whack-a-mole working may feel productive, constantly moving from one task to another comes at a price.

Research by Sophie Leroy gives us a name for one of those costs: attention residue.

When we switch from one task to another, part of our attention remains snagged on the previous task.

So even though we've moved on to Task B, part of our brain is still thinking about Task A. What still needs doing. What we'll need to do when we return.

In other words, we don't switch cleanly. We drag work with us.

And the challenge doesn’t stop there. Each time we switch tasks, we also need time to rebuild context. We have to remind ourselves what the task is about, where we got to and what we were thinking about it.

Gloria Mark and her team have studied the impact of interruptions and task switching in modern work. Their research suggests that while a quick email might take us away for a few minutes, recovering from it can take much longer.

In fact, it can take up to 23 minutes to be fully regain focus on the task we were working on before the interruption.

What’s more they found that people switch their attention remarkably frequently throughout the working day. On average, we switch from one thing to another every 47 seconds because the next email, message or notification is never far away.

Over the course of a day, these costs begin to add up. Attention becomes fragmented. Context is lost. Progress slows. Mental energy is consumed.

The end result is that we feel drained and unproductive. Drained because our attention has been pulled in multiple directions all day, and unproductive because the work that mattered most has been repeatedly interrupted.

Performance = Potential - Interference

When working with individuals who come to me for help with focus and productivity, I often share a simple equation developed by Tim Gallwey. I find it provides a useful starting point for discussing what's really going on.

In the 1970s, Tim Gallwey proposed that performance is a function of two things: our capacity and anything that gets in the way of us using it.

In the workplace when people feel unproductive, they often assume the problem lies with them and focus on the first part of the equation.

This leads to them working longer, pushing through breaks or multitasking their way through a backlog.

What often gets overlooked is the second part of the equation: interference.

Emails, messages, notifications, and other interruptions all compete for our attention, making it hard to focus on what matters most.

As a result, people can find themselves working harder and harder to overcome a problem that isn't entirely of their own making.

The good news is that understanding the problem opens the door to a different solution. Rather than trying to squeeze ever more effort from ourselves, we can make small changes that reduce interference and create more space for focused work.

Small changes that reduce interference

You don't need to overhaul your entire working day to see an improvement. Clients tell me some of the biggest gains come from small, intentional actions.

For example:

• Schedule time for important work before your day becomes dominated by other people's priorities.

• Turn off non-essential notifications to reduce unnecessary interruptions.

• Batch emails and messages where possible rather than responding to everything as it arrives.

• Protect periods of uninterrupted focus for work that requires deeper thinking.

These changes may seem simple, but they help reduce the amount of switching your brain is required to do throughout the day.

The goal isn't to eliminate interruptions completely. That's rarely realistic in today's workplace. The goal is to become more intentional about where your attention goes and less reactive to every demand that appears.

Perhaps it’s time to rethink how we work

Today's working environment makes it hard to stay focused on the work that matters most. Frequent task switching leads to fragmented attention and a steady drain on the cognitive resources we rely on for concentration, decision-making and problem-solving.

Many people respond by trying harder. Yet performance isn't only about effort or ability. It's also influenced by how much interference we have to deal with.

Recognising that can be liberating. Because once we stop seeing productivity as purely a personal issue, we can begin to make changes that help us work with greater focus, intention and effectiveness.

If this article has resonated with you, it may be time to consider what's getting in the way of your ability to work well. Stepping back can often reveal patterns and opportunities for change that are difficult to spot when you're caught up in the day-to-day demands of work.

A Workday Rethink Session gives you the opportunity to do exactly that. Together we'll explore how you work and identify practical ways to improve concentration, reduce distractions and create more space for focused work. References and further reading

Hari, J. (2022). Stolen focus: Why you can't pay attention—and how to think deeply again. Crown

Leroy, S. (2009). Why is it so hard to do my work? The challenge of attention residue when switching between work tasks. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 109(2), 168–181.

Mark, G., Gudith, D., & Klocke, U. (2008). The cost of interrupted work: More speed and stress. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 107–110.

Microsoft (2025). 2025 Annual Work Trend Index. Microsoft. https://news.microsoft.com/annual-work-trend-index-2025/

Rock, D. (2020). Your brain at work: Strategies for overcoming distraction, regaining focus, and working smarter all day long (Rev. ed.). HarperCollins.

Uncapher, M.R., & Wagner, A.D. (2018) Minds and brains of media multitaskers: Current findings and future directions, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 115(40), 9889–9896.