Do you end your days feeling empty, even though your schedule is nothing special and you don’t feel like you’ve worked more than usual? Many employees describe this same
fatigue at workdiffuse, which they associate with a lack of motivation. In fact, several recent studies show that the real culprit is not the amount of work, but the way the day is broken up into micro-tasks, calls, notifications, unscheduled meetings. This constant division of time exhausts the brain more than we think.
Fatigue at work: whenopen space chop up your schedule
For this study, a team of Spanish researchers followed 26 people working first in an open space then in a closed work cabin. The tasks were simple: read emails, memorize a list, respond to notifications, but the brain reacted very differently depending on the environment. In a closed space, he became more efficient, while on a shared platform, he increased his concentration effort.
What this experience highlights is the invisible cost of constant distractions. Even when you think you’re “no longer listening” to the next conversation or keyboard noise, your brain continues to process them in the background, sorting the sounds, deciding what’s important and what’s not. This incessant sorting consumes mental energy and adds to your work: this is what specialists call cognitive load.
The electroencephalograms recorded by the Spanish researchers show that, in the closed work cabin, the brain carried out the tasks using less energy. In open space, it was the opposite: activity linked to intense concentration increased, with an increase in gamma waves, and theta waves, linked to mental fatigue, increased. In other words, to stay at the same level of performance, your brain works harder!
What studies say about distractions and cognitive load
Another study carried out in 2021 also showed that noise in open space increased physiological stress by 34% and negative mood by 25%. But an analysis published in 2013 of more than 42,000 employees already went in the same direction, revealing that open space employees were “unsatisfied”, especially because of the noise and lack of confidentiality.
This soundscape adds to the fragmentation of tasks: responding to a message while writing an email, listening to a question from a colleague, taking a look at a notification. Experts speak of cognitive switching to refer to these changes in context.
However, according to a report from the European Parliament, it takes around 25 minutes to regain concentration after an interruption… which makes the days very trying.
How to protect your energy?
Concretely, turn off notifications, warn your colleagues that you need to concentrate and suggest to your manager shared interruption rules, quiet time and teleworking.