The cost of interrupted work

TLDR

The study investigates whether interruption context matters and discusses how system design can support interrupted work. The authors conducted an empirical study to examine the effect of interruption context. The study found that interruption context has no effect on task completion time or quality, yet people work faster at the cost of increased stress, frustration, time pressure, and effort, with personality traits such as openness and need for personal structure predicting disruption costs.

Abstract

We performed an empirical study to investigate whether the context of interruptions makes a difference. We found that context does not make a difference but surprisingly, people completed interrupted tasks in less time with no difference in quality. Our data suggests that people compensate for interruptions by working faster, but this comes at a price: experiencing more stress, higher frustration, time pressure and effort. Individual differences exist in the management of interruptions: personality measures of openness to experience and need for personal structure predict disruption costs of interruptions. We discuss implications for how system design can support interrupted work.