Turn off notifications to improve focus

AP

Whether it’s a beep, a ring or a quiet vibration – simply receiving a text on your phone can be as distracting as making a call or sending a message.

Knowing that a text has arrived – even if we don’t actually pick the phone up and read it – significantly diverts our attention from other jobs, a study found.

People who received text notifications while carrying out a complex computer task were three times more likely to make mistakes. Psychologists from Florida State University, who carried out the study, said although text alerts were short, they still had the power to set the mind wandering.

‘Phone notifications alone significantly disrupt performance on an attention-demanding task, even when participants do not directly interact with a mobile during the task,’ they said.

The study, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, said phones should be silenced when you are trying to concentrate to help you focus on the matter at hand. – Daily Mail