Leadership Minute: Calm the Noise and Help the Team Refocus
The constant stream of notifications, pings, emails, and last-minute requests is draining team productivity. And it’s not just hitting goals taking the hit — focus and decision quality suffer too.
The study In Search of Lost Focus by The Economist points out how digital overload keeps the body in a mild but persistent state of stress. Cortisol stays elevated. Mental clarity fades. By Friday, burnout is baked in.
This isn’t just an inconvenience — it’s a threat to sustainable performance. When stress becomes chronic, even routine decisions feel heavier, and creativity takes a nosedive.
As author Cal Newport notes in A World Without Email, “The knowledge sector’s insistence that productivity is a personal issue seems to have created a so-called ‘tragedy of the commons.’” In other words, when everyone optimizes for speed — messages at all hours, fly-by task assignments, endless check-ins — the entire system breaks down.
The data backs this up. According to a Harvard Business Review article, collaborative work—such as emails, instant messages, calls, and meetings—has increased by over 50% in the past decade, now taking up as much as 85% of a knowledge worker’s week. This leaves little time for actual execution.
The result? Progress slows, stress climbs, and teams become reactive instead of proactive. Initiatives stall, deadlines slip, and the bigger picture gets buried under a constant flood of pings and comments.
This isn’t a personal failure. Even top performers get overwhelmed when communication is constant, unclear, and unstructured. In fact, the higher someone performs, the more likely they are to be pulled into conversations across departments, increasing the risk of burnout.
So what shifts things? Not heroics. Not working harder. Just better systems — and a bit of discipline.
Challenge the Culture of Constant Availability
Teams can’t do deep work if they’re always in reactive mode. Being reachable 24/7 shouldn’t be a badge of honor. Set clear expectations, batch responses, and carve out protected blocks of focused time. Without that, mental energy gets depleted fast.
Deep work isn’t a luxury — it’s a requirement for meaningful progress. Without it, execution becomes a patchwork of half-finished thoughts and fragmented efforts.
Prioritize What Actually Moves the Needle
Most of the daily noise doesn’t lead to meaningful outcomes. In fact, research suggests as little as 10% of tasks create real value. Identify what actually drives results — and give that the focus it deserves. Everything else can wait.
Regularly revisit team goals and ensure alignment. A well-prioritized to-do list protects both time and morale.
Streamline Communication Tools
Tool overload causes fragmentation. Every platform added — from Slack to Teams to Asana — increases the risk of missed details and context switching. Pick one primary hub, and stick to it. If needed, bring in outside support to help set a single source of truth.
Every switch between tools costs cognitive energy. The fewer the hops, the clearer the focus.
Match Communication to the Message
Not everything needs a meeting. Not everything should live in a comment thread. Use asynchronous communication (like emails or updates in project tools) when there’s already clarity and little nuance. Use synchronous communication (like calls or huddles) when new ideas are forming, or issues need nuance, tone, or a human touch.
Here’s a simple rule of thumb: if a message needs more than one back-and-forth to clarify, it probably should’ve been a quick call. On the flip side, text-only messages can easily be misunderstood when nuance matters. Team relationships — and project momentum — suffer when that gap gets ignored.
Protect Focus Like It’s A Team Asset
Distraction is expensive. Leaders play a critical role in defending team attention. That means pushing back on low-value requests, reducing random ad-hoc tasks, and anchoring the workweek around a few high-impact goals. It also means modeling the behavior — respecting focus time, canceling unnecessary meetings, and showing that being “offline” doesn’t mean being unproductive.
Attention is a finite resource. Treat it like budget. Spend it wisely.
What Matters Most
Productivity isn’t just about time — it’s about attention. And attention is a team resource. When the systems support clarity and focus, the work gets sharper, outcomes improve, and burnout doesn’t win.
This shift doesn’t require a company-wide overhaul. Small, intentional changes in communication and expectations can unlock hours of quality work time. The impact? Less chaos, more clarity, and a culture that actually supports getting the work done.
