# Attention residue Attention residue is the part of our attention that stays on a previous task after we switch to a new one. Sophie Leroy coined the term in 2009. Her question was simple: why is it so hard to focus on the work in front of us when we keep moving between tasks? In her experiments, people who switched away from a task they had not finished kept thinking about it, and performed worse on the next task. People who finished the first task under time pressure showed less residue and did better on the next task than both those who left it unfinished and those who finished it without time pressure. The likely reason is that a deadline pushes us to close the task in our heads, not just on paper. These were lab studies with about 80 undergraduates each, so the core idea is well grounded but the exact size of the effect in real work is uncertain. Why it matters: [[Context switching]] costs more than the switch itself. Every half-finished task, unread message we glanced at, or project we "keep an eye on" leaves residue that follows us into the next block of work. Practical consequences: finish or explicitly park a task before switching (write down where you are and what comes next), batch shallow work, and keep few projects active at the same time. ## References - Leroy, S. (2009). Why is it so hard to do my work? The challenge of attention residue when switching between work tasks. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 109(2), 168-181. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2009.04.002 - https://www.bps.org.uk/research-digest/surprising-benefits-time-pressure-work - https://concepts.dsebastien.net/concept/attention-residue/ ## Related - [[Context switching]] - [[Context switching is not an idempotent operation]] - [[Multitasking]] - [[Open loops]] - [[Ovsiankina effect]] - [[Limit Work In Progress]] - [[Slow productivity]] - [[Deep work]]