I wonder whether we have misunderstood the productivity problem in knowledge work.

Perhaps we have not become worse at focusing.

Maybe our jobs have become harder to focus on.

There are simply more things competing for our attention: messages, meetings, dashboards, notifications, requests and opportunities.

Most of them are not obviously unimportant.

In fact, many are perfectly reasonable.

That is what makes them difficult to ignore.

A customer email may genuinely need a response. A colleague may be blocked waiting for your input. A new opportunity may be worth considering. None of these things looks like distraction in the usual sense.

But each one asks the same question: Does this now matter more than what I was already doing?

That is where the real cost begins.

Knowledge work is increasingly not only about doing difficult work. It is about repeatedly deciding which difficult work deserves attention next.

That may sound like a small distinction.

But I think it has significant implications.

The problem is not simply that our concentration is being interrupted. It is that every interruption can reopen a priority decision we thought we had already made.

The email asks whether the current task should wait.

The Teams message asks whether someone else’s urgency should become our own.

The new request asks whether the plan still deserves to survive.

Perhaps we are not lacking effort.

Maybe we are spending too much of it repeatedly deciding what deserves our attention.

Do you ever finish the day feeling busy, but strangely unsure what you have actually moved forward?

Photo by Bas van den Eijkhof on Unsplash