The Dentist Test

A field report from a coaching session

The other day, mid-session, I asked a client something. Would it be alright if I answered a Teams chat and an email on the side while we talked? He found that inappropriate. Then I asked how he would feel if his dentist glanced at his phone with the drill in his hand. He did not have to think long. My final question was the decisive one: what is the difference to your own work? Why do you accept being interrupted there, by people and by messages?

It went quiet.

Full attention, but only for others

We take undivided attention for granted when others owe it to us, at the dentist, from the pilot, from the surgeon. In our own leadership work the constant interruption counts as normal, almost as a mark of importance.

The research is clear. Gloria Mark at the University of California, Irvine has measured that after an interruption it takes on average about 23 minutes to return to the original level of concentration. Sophie Leroy names the reason "attention residue": part of our cognitive activity stays attached to the previous task, even after we have moved on. A brief glance at the phone therefore costs far more than the few seconds it seems to take.

The real point: the hand on the phone is your own

The real point comes next. Almost half of our interruptions we cause ourselves. It is our own hand that reaches for the phone, our own eye that drifts to the inbox. That places the topic squarely inside your circle of influence. Over the colleague who bursts in you have little power. Over the reflex to reach for the screen you have a great deal.

I have described the logic of the circle of influence more fully elsewhere, in When the job wobbles. Here the basic figure is enough: whoever asks what is actually in their hands usually finds more than they first suspected.

Three moves from practice

From this insight we put a few very concrete things in place with the client:

• Outlook opens straight in the calendar view in the morning, so the first look of the day belongs to his own planning.
• Mails on which he is only in copy are pre-sorted by an assistant; they are reviewed together in a fixed CC hour on Friday.
• In the morning he marks the frog on his to-do list, the most unpleasant task, and tackles it first.

These are small moves. They work because a stance sits behind them: that your own attention is a resource that deserves protection.

An impulse for your week

From your dentist you expect the drill to be put down before he looks at his phone. Your own work, and the people who depend on it, deserve the same undivided concentration.

Ask yourself once a day this week: which interruption did I just cause myself, and could it have waited ten minutes?