The calendar says everyone's back. That doesn't mean our focus came back with us.
Fall has a way of going from zero to full speed almost overnight. Calendars tighten, priorities collide and the runway to year-end suddenly feels a lot shorter. The usual response is to move faster, squeeze more in and keep pushing. But being busy doesn't necessarily mean we're being productive. When everything is competing for our attention, the real challenge becomes deciding what deserves it.
So what if the smartest move isn't to pick up the pace, but to get clearer about where our focus and energy are actually going? From the hidden cost of switching between tasks to the role energy and recovery play in performance, we're digging into what helps teams stay sharp when demands increase, with research behind it and perspective from Robin O'Grady, international keynote speaker and Eventology partner.
The Cost of Constantly Switching Gears
We tend to think of task switching as instantaneous: close one tab, join the meeting, answer the message, move on to the next priority. But while the task may have changed, our attention doesn't always change with it. Research by organizational psychologist Sophie Leroy identifies this as attention residue: when we move from one task to another, particularly when the first task is unfinished, part of our attention can remain focused on what we just left behind. Later research by Leroy and Theresa Glomb further explored how attention can remain caught up in interrupted work, affecting performance on the task that follows (Leroy & Glomb, 2018). In other words, the interruption may be over, but mentally, part of us can still be somewhere else.
That's an important distinction for today's teams. The issue isn't simply that we're busy or distracted. It's that a day filled with emails, meetings, messages, shifting priorities and unfinished work can repeatedly divide the same finite pool of attention. As the pace picks up this fall, protecting focus isn't about eliminating every interruption. It's about being more intentional about where attention is going and how often we're asking people to redirect it.
- Protect focused work: Not every message, meeting or request needs to interrupt the work already underway
- Make priorities unmistakable: When everything is urgent, attention gets spent deciding what deserves attention
- Create better transitions: Where possible, allow people to reach a natural stopping point before shifting their focus somewhere else
The takeaway: Constantly redirecting attention has a performance cost. When attention remains tied to unfinished work, fewer cognitive resources are available for what comes next, which can affect performance (Leroy & Glomb, 2018). For businesses, protecting focus isn't just about helping people feel less distracted. It's about creating the conditions for people to think clearly and do their best work where it matters most.
Focus Is Also an Energy Issue
Protecting attention is only part of the equation. People also need the mental and physical capacity to use that attention well. We tend to manage work by looking at time: how many hours are available, what can fit into the week and how quickly something can be completed. But a full calendar doesn't tell us much about the energy people have available to meet its demands.
Research on workplace recovery supports that distinction. Organizational psychologist Sabine Sonnentag and colleagues have found that recovery from work plays an important role in sustaining employee wellbeing, motivation and job performance (Sonnentag, Cheng & Parker, 2022). Recovery isn't simply about taking a vacation or doing less. It's about giving the mental and physical systems being taxed by work an opportunity to replenish.
That makes the fall reset a good time to look beyond what's on the calendar and ask where the team's capacity is actually going.
- Clarify what matters now: Priorities that made sense three months ago may not be the priorities that matter today
- Question unnecessary demand: Look at meetings, processes and recurring work that consume energy without contributing enough value
- Build in recovery: Intense periods of work aren't necessarily the problem. Expecting people to operate at that intensity indefinitely is
The takeaway: Capacity is a business resource. When teams continually operate at high demand without enough opportunity to recover, sustaining wellbeing, motivation and performance becomes harder. A meaningful reset isn't about asking people to fit more into the calendar. It's about making deliberate choices about where their time, attention and energy will have the greatest impact.
Where Energy Meets Performance
Protecting focus is one part of the equation. But as workloads increase, there's another factor that can have just as much influence on how teams perform: energy.
To bring that perspective into the conversation, we're turning to Robin O'Grady, whose work focuses on workplace culture, employee engagement and sustainable performance, particularly how people manage stress, energy and focus when demands are high.
One of the biggest drains on a team's energy and focus isn't always the volume of work itself. Constant context-switching, unclear priorities and the feeling that you can never quite get ahead can keep people in reactive mode. Recovery gets pushed aside, attention starts to slip and even strong teams can see communication and consistency begin to suffer.
When everything feels urgent, Robin's advice is to get very clear about what matters now: identify the one to three outcomes that deserve priority, define what can wait and put simple guardrails around people's time and attention. Shorter check-ins, fewer handoffs and protected blocks of focused work can help create that clarity without pretending the demands themselves are going to disappear.
There's another piece that's just as important: recovery isn't the opposite of performance; it's part of sustaining it.
“Sustainable high performance during a demanding period looks like a team that can deliver results and recover: clear priorities, steady pace, efficient course-correction, and leaders who model boundaries, micro-recovery, and calm under pressure.”
That ability to deliver and recover brings the conversation full circle. The goal isn't to eliminate pressure or create a workday without interruptions. It's to create enough clarity around priorities, attention and energy that teams can respond to demands without spending all of their time reacting to them.
Where We Go From Here
A fall reset doesn't need to mean an overhaul. It's an opportunity to look at what's working, what isn't and what deserves our attention as priorities shift. The research we've explored, along with Robin's perspective, points to something practical: protecting focus, managing energy and making room for recovery all play a role in how teams navigate demanding periods.
For a deeper dive into the science of attention, psychologist and researcher Gloria Mark's Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity explores how attention works in the digital age and how our patterns of attention affect the way we work and live.
Fall will bring new demands. We don't need perfect balance to meet them, just a clearer sense of what deserves our attention, our energy and our time.
References
Leroy, S. (2009). 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, 109(2), 168–181.https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0749597809000399?via%3Dihub
Leroy, S., & Glomb, T. M. (2018). Tasks interrupted: How anticipating time pressure on resumption of an interrupted task causes attention residue and low performance on interrupting tasks and how a “ready-to-resume” plan mitigates the effects. Organization Science, 29(3), 380–397.https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/orsc.2017.1184?
Sonnentag, S., Cheng, B. H., & Parker, S. L. (2022). Recovery from work: Advancing the field toward the future. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 9, 33–60.https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-012420-091355
