You close a half-written email and join a meeting. A colleague is explaining a problem, but you are still adjusting a sentence in the message you left behind. You hear the question. You even nod. Then you realize you have missed the part that would let you answer it. That lingering pull has a name: attention residue.
Organizational researcher Sophie Leroy developed the concept to describe the difficulty of leaving one task mentally when another has already begun. The work on your screen has changed; some of your thinking is still occupied by the previous job.
That makes an interruption more complicated than the minutes it takes. There is the work you stopped, the demand you turned toward, and the unresolved thought traveling between them. Understanding which part is causing trouble leads to more useful advice than another instruction to concentrate harder.
What attention residue adds to the multitasking story
Research on task switching has long shown that changing activities can carry a measurable cost. In four experiments published in 2001, Joshua Rubinstein, David Meyer and Jeffrey Evans compared repeating a task with alternating between tasks involving geometric classifications or arithmetic. Switching took extra time. More complicated rules increased that cost, while cues about the next task reduced it.
Those experiments concern the work of changing what you are doing. Leroy’s concept is more specific: thoughts about one activity continuing while you try to do another. The distinction matters. Knowing which spreadsheet to open does not necessarily stop you worrying about the unfinished email.
In Leroy’s 2009 paper, two experiments showed difficulty disengaging from unfinished work and poorer performance on the subsequent task. Finishing alone was not a guaranteed clean break. In those experiments, time pressure while completing the first task helped people disengage from it.
That detail is worth keeping in view because pressure can enter a task transition at different points. Being pressed to finish now is different from worrying that you will have too little time when you return. Later research examined that second situation.
The deadline you carry into the next task
Consider leaving a report for a conversation with a colleague. You might be willing to help, yet keep mentally checking the time because the report is due soon. Part of the difficulty is the return you are anticipating.
Leroy and Theresa Glomb investigated that problem in 2018. Across four studies, their findings supported a specific pattern: anticipating time pressure when returning to interrupted work made it harder to shift attention to the interrupting task. Performance on that second task suffered.
The direction of the finding is easy to miss. The person interrupting you may receive less careful attention because you are still occupied by the work they interrupted. This is about the quality of the new interaction as well as the disruption to the old one.
The same research tested a brief intervention: pause to reflect on the interrupted work and plan your return before switching. This ready-to-resume plan reduced attention residue and helped protect performance on the interrupting task in the studied conditions. The evidence concerns particular task transitions and performance measures, rather than a guaranteed increase in a person’s output across a whole day.
A return plan for attention residue
In a University of Washington Bothell account of the research, Leroy describes a short record of where you left off and what comes next, including any remaining challenges. The report describes both field and laboratory tests of the approach.
A useful note is more specific than “finish report.” For example:
- Where I stopped: the draft is complete through the cost comparison.
- Next action: check the two supplier figures in the source sheet.
- Return point: after the meeting, reopen the highlighted paragraph before checking messages.
This example is Sapien’s everyday adaptation of the idea. A sentence or two may be enough to make the return concrete. The note only needs to preserve the next useful step; planning the rest of the week would give you another job to finish.
Related research gives the planning idea some additional support. In experiments published in 2011, E. J. Masicampo and Roy Baumeister found that unfulfilled goals could intrude during unrelated activities. Making specific plans reduced those interference effects. The measured outcomes included thoughts intruding during reading and performance on anagrams. This is evidence about interference from unfinished goals, with a narrower reach than general claims about clearing the mind.
Writing a return note also uses an external aid to carry information you would otherwise have to keep available. Sapien’s article on cognitive offloading examines that broader trade-off. Here, the aim is narrower: give the unfinished task a workable next step so you can attend to what is in front of you.
When a note cannot solve the interruption
Attention residue is not always a planning problem. Sometimes the demand is urgent enough that you need to switch immediately. Sometimes the real problem is a workload that leaves no credible time to return. A note saying “finish later” cannot create an hour that your schedule does not contain.
For a routine interruption, you could ask for a moment to mark your place. A team dealing with repeated nonurgent requests could try collecting them at an agreed time, with a separate route for urgent matters. Those arrangements are practical suggestions to test against the demands of the job. The studies above do not establish one communication policy for every workplace.
It is worth noticing what keeps pulling you back. Missing information calls for a different next step from an unresolved disagreement or a deadline nobody can meet. Treating all three as a failure of individual focus would hide the work that actually needs doing.
Try the return note at a recurring transition and notice whether you can follow the next conversation or activity more fully. That is a more relevant observation than whether the note looks organized. Keep the experiment small enough to use on a busy day, and treat what you notice as personal feedback rather than proof of cause and effect.
The Sapien interpretation: stopping well is part of doing the work
A calendar can make a day look neatly divided. The report ends at eleven; the meeting begins at eleven. The person living through that schedule has to make a less tidy transition, especially if the first task still matters and remains unfinished.
We often treat that transition as empty space, something to squeeze out. A more useful interpretation of attention residue is that leaving a task can be a small piece of work in its own right. You decide what remains unresolved and preserve enough context to return.
The email may still need an answer after the meeting, and the schedule may still need changing. Attention residue does not disappear simply because you wrote a note, but leaving yourself a place to pick up the sentence gives stopping a practical shape. You have recorded what comes next. For the moment, there is somebody else to listen to.
Read next: Cognitive Flexibility Exercises: Can You Actually Train Mental Adaptability? It follows the next question: when does practicing a mental skill help outside the exercise itself?
References
- Rubinstein JS, Meyer DE, Evans JE. Executive control of cognitive processes in task switching. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. 2001;27(4):763-797. doi:10.1037/0096-1523.27.4.763.
- Leroy S. Why is it so hard to do my work? The challenge of attention residue when switching between work tasks. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. 2009;109(2):168-181. doi:10.1016/j.obhdp.2009.04.002.
- Leroy S, Glomb TM. Tasks Interrupted. Organization Science. 2018;29(3):380-397. doi:10.1287/orsc.2017.1184.
- Masicampo EJ, Baumeister RF. Consider it done! Plan making can eliminate the cognitive effects of unfulfilled goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2011;101(4):667-683. doi:10.1037/a0024192.
- Andris E. An ongoing study on the success of staying focused. University of Washington Bothell. May 17, 2024. Institutional account of Leroy’s research, not an independent replication.
- James W. The Principles of Psychology, Chapter XI: Attention. 1890. Primary-text transcription hosted by York University; source of the opening quotation.
