When blocking distractions backfires
With distractions blocked, some people worked longer stretches without physical breaks and reported more stress. Blocking works best paired with scheduled breaks.
The short version
Blocking distracting websites at work raised people's ratings of their own focus and productivity, but it did not help everyone in the same way. People who felt less in control of their work benefited most. People who felt more in control unexpectedly reported a higher workload, and those who worked longer stretches without physical breaks reported more stress. Blocking distractions is a tool that needs breaks built in around it.
What the researchers did
Gloria Mark, Mary Czerwinski and Shamsi Iqbal ran an exploratory field study with 32 information workers in their own workplaces. For a week, participants used software that blocked online distractions. The researchers measured self-rated focus and productivity, and looked at how personality and work-style differences — including how much control people felt over their work, Conscientiousness and perseverance, and susceptibility to social media — shaped the effects. The paper was presented at CHI 2018, the main academic conference on human-computer interaction.
What they found
- Focus and productivity went up overall. Participants rated both significantly higher while distractions were blocked.
- Less control, more benefit. The biggest beneficiaries were people who felt less in control of their work, a group that also tended to score lower on Conscientiousness and perseverance.
- Social media users gained most in focus. Those most susceptible to social media distraction reported the largest gains.
- A surprising cost. People who felt more in control of their work reported a higher workload with distractions blocked.
- Fewer breaks, more stress. Participants with higher control worked longer stretches without physical breaks, which was linked to higher stress.
Limits and caveats
The sample is small and the study is explicitly exploratory, so the individual-difference findings are patterns worth testing rather than settled results. Outcomes are mostly self-reported. It appears to draw on the same kind of one-week blocking field study as the team's earlier paper (Mark, Iqbal & Czerwinski, 2017), so the two should not be counted as independent confirmations.
What it means for how you work
Online distractions do double duty: they waste time, but they also act as accidental breaks. Take them away and some people stop resting at all. If you block distractions, decide in advance when your breaks are — a timer works (see the Pomodoro Technique) — and make them physical where you can: stand up, walk, look away from the screen. If blocking makes you feel more pressured rather than more focused, that is a known response, not a personal failing; try shorter blocking windows instead of a whole day.