Just how much do interruptions like phone calls and emails negatively affect you and your work? Quite a bit, according to The Economist’s recent “Are digital distractions harming labour productivity?”:
“Conducting tasks while receiving e-mails and phone calls reduces a worker’s IQ by about ten points relative to working in uninterrupted quiet. That is equivalent to losing a night’s sleep, and twice as debilitating as using marijuana. By one estimate, it takes nearly half an hour to recover focus fully for the task at hand after an interruption.”