Mental Health

Getting Distracted At Work May Be Related To Higher Levels Of Intelligence

By R. Siva Kumar | Update Date: Jan 20, 2016 02:00 PM EST

Do you get easily distracted at your workplace? Then you might belong to the higher intelligence level, says a new report by Steelcase, a workplace solutions company.

The company analysed data gathered by neuroscientists and psychological researchers and built up a unique report.

"Employers are always on the lookout for the brightest people available, however, the difficulty to withstand multiple tasks and distractions in the office affects smart people in the same way as everyone else, if not more," said Bostan Ljubic, vice president of Steelcase.

The brighter ones are those that have a tougher time deciding which tasks are more important, which might make them distracted, as well as fill them with "a feeling of inadequacy and inability to deal with the workload as a whole," psychiatrist Ned Hallowell told the Telegraph.

About 10,000 employees from 17 countries were studied. Apart from the link between distraction and intelligence, the team discovered that their inability to focus is most probably due to technology in the workplace, making the average office worker become distracted once in every three minutes.

"The ways in which we work are changing more rapidly than ever before and the brain is being subjected to stresses and distractions which can lead to overload and statistics show that distractions in the workplace are on the rise," Ljubic said.

"While our higher-level cognitive skills distinguish us from other mammals, being attuned to what's going on around us is also embedded in our evolution, a key to survival," the researchers wrote. "This means that today's way of working has become a Catch 22: We're taking our natural inclination to be distracted and training our brains to be even more so."

© 2023 Counsel & Heal All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.

Join the Conversation

Real Time Analytics