Lancaster University study: people pick up their phone about 85 times a day, not the 37 they estimate

Participants in a Lancaster University study estimated their daily phone use at about 37 checks on average. Measurement showed they actually picked up the phone around 85 times a day, ad-hoc-news.de reports ad-hoc-news.dead-hoc-news.dead-hoc-news.deOpen source ↗. The figures are cited by Nico Fernández Miranda, an applied-neuroscience expert in productivity and author of "Hackea tu cerebro". He argues that lost productivity often stems not from a lack of time but from a lack of focus.

Interruptions and task switching

According to Fernández Miranda, constant interruptions from smartphones and digital notifications prevent deep work and force the brain to reorient repeatedly. He says each short phone check amounts to a task switch: attention has to be detached from the actual activity. Once the interruption ends, the person must find the thread again and rebuild the context of the previous task.

In his view, these friction losses consume energy and reduce real performance. He considers simply adding working hours rarely a solution for catching up on a backlog. A sharper focus, he holds, ultimately beats more hours worked, since the ability to concentrate can be trained like a muscle. He also states that digital platforms are designed to hold human attention for as long as possible, and that anyone who sets no clear limits and does not consciously control use continuously loses cognitive resources.

Five measures he proposes

To regain concentration, Fernández Miranda points to five measures concerning the work environment and habits [1]:

• Keep physical distance from the phone: during focused work, leave it in another room to prevent automatic reaching reflexes.
• Turn off notifications: switch off unnecessary push messages and sounds to minimize unplanned interruptions.
• Avoid multitasking: parallel work fragments attention.
• Schedule focus blocks at peak times: place demanding tasks in fixed blocks during the part of the day when individual concentration is highest.
• Rest and screen-free breaks: sufficient sleep and breaks spent without screens form the physiological basis for cognitive performance.

By freeing workflows from digital disturbances and structuring them deliberately, he says, performance can be raised without extending the workday ad-hoc-news.dead-hoc-news.dead-hoc-news.deOpen source ↗.