Our Research

The data and information that backs up our methodology

Focus

Monotasking Affects IQ

IQ scores also take a hit when people are multitasking. Some male participants experienced an IQ dip of 15 points while multitasking during cognitive skills tests.

Janssen, Gould, Li, Brumby, Cox, University of London

Task-Switching

The average person takes 23.25 minutes to recover after switching tasks. Interruptions that share a context with the main task may be perceived as being beneficial but the actual disruption cost is the same as with a different context.

Gloria Mark, University of California, Irvine

Attention Residue

Increased recovery time after a distraction has been coined “attention residue.” If you’re unconsciously bobbing between tabs throughout your day, this gunk could be stealing several hours of productivity.

Sophie Leroy, University of Washington

Distractions

Phones Reduce Cognitive Ability

Having your phone in sight--even when turned off--can impact your cognitive abilities.

Ward, Duke, Gneezy, and Bos, University of Chicago

Timing

52 Minute Sprints

The secret to retaining the highest level of productivity over the span of a workday is not working longer–but working smarter with frequent breaks. Employees with the highest levels of productivity worked for 52 minutes with intense purpose, then rested.

Draugiem Group

Chronobiology

Study after study yielded a similar pattern. Each day has three distinct phases, and for most people, it builds to a peak, tumbles to a trough, and rebounds. Everybody, everyday, experiences these three phases.

Daniel Pink, When

Brain Chemistry

Regulating Nervous System

To avoid hyperarousal or hypoarousal, and to keep within the optimal window of tolerance through various body exercises. including breathing 4x4x4 or centering exercises.

Pat Ogen and Kekuni Minton, University of Colorado, Boulder

Sharing Wins for Dopamine

Changing dopamine immediately altered willingness to work and reinforced preceding action choices by encoding temporal-difference reward prediction errors. Dopamine can provide a learning signal to guide future behavior.

Hamid, Pettibone, Mabrouk, Hetrick, Schmidt, Vander Weele, Kennedy, Aragona & Berke

Social Energy

Flow in groups

Participants in highly interdependent teams reported more joy in flow than individuals performing less interdependently. Solitary flow, while quite enjoyable, is not as enjoyable as social flow.

Charles Walker, St. Bonaventure University

Accountability

Social accountability motivates distinctive cognitive coping strategies and that, specifically, process accountability (Accountability to a process) increases the time and effort people put into cognitive tasks.

Jennifer S. Lerner and Philip E. Tetlock, Harvard

Social Breaks

Social connections are key to well-being. The self-focused road to happiness was less effective than having no plans for action at all, which was the case for half the participants.

Greater Good Magazine

Time Management

Do The Hard Thing Early

Our most productive day time of day is 11 AM when we complete the most tasks. After lunchtime, our productivity drops -- and it completely plummets after 4PM. Our most productive day of the week is Monday. Fall is the most productive season.

Pricenomics Study

You’re More productive with a plan

If you have a to-do list, you’re more likely to be able to focus and get things done. It' frees up space in your brain.

Productivity and Planning Study

Urgency Effect

“Subjects were more likely to perform urgent, smaller tasks with a deadline than more important tasks without an immediate time constraint, even if the option to perform the urgent task is objectively worse.”

Meng Zhu, Yang Yang, Christopher K Hsee, Oxford University

Parkinson’s Law

Work will fill the time given to achieve that work.

Parkinson’s Law, Wikipedia

Music To Work To

Background Music

Research supports that high-information load music (music with lyrics, music that is novel, large tonal range, etc) has a similar impact on cognition as multitasking. Low information load music (Narrow tonal range, repetitive, subtle) can slightly enhance cognitive performance on certain types of tasks and can certainly boost mood.

Derrick M. Kiger, Ohio Wesleyan University

Binaural Beats Don’t Work

Although binaural beats have become trendy, further research has not shown them to be particularly effective.

Fran López-Caballero and Carles Escera, University of Barcelona

Rituals

Transformational Spaces

A well-crafted experience structure frees participants to pursue goals and possibilities with focus and abandon. Anything that could be a wasted effort will have been managed by the risk mitigation efforts of the designer and the supportive scaffolding of the experience structure.

Ida Benedetto, Patterns of Transformation

Superstitions Improve Work

Activating a superstition boosts participants’ confidence in mastering upcoming tasks, which in turn improves performance. Our experiment shows that increased task persistence constitutes one means by which self-efficacy, enhanced by superstition, improves performance.

Lysann Damisch, Barbara Stoberock, Thomas Mussweiler

Rituals Reduce Stress

Ritual buffers against uncertainty and anxiety. Our results indicate that ritual guides goal-directed performance by regulating the brain’s response to personal failure..

Nicholas M. Hobson, Devin Bonk, Michael Inzlict, University of Toronto

Want to collaborate on a whitepaper or research initiative?
Email us at hi@caveday.org