Focus
5 min
Open-plan offices and the 23-minute problem
One interruption costs far more than the thirty seconds it takes. What researchers found, and how to protect your focus.
Researchers at the University of California, Irvine followed office workers through their days and found that after an interruption it took, on average, about twenty-three minutes to get back to the original task.
It is not the noise, it is the attention
Open offices are rarely dangerously loud. They sit around 60 to 70 dB. The problem is intelligible speech: your brain cannot help following a nearby conversation, even when you are trying not to.
Quiet, but not cut off
Quelde One’s office mode lowers speech-band sound more than rumble, so a colleague saying your name still comes through, but the conversation two desks away does not.
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110dB