Why do I keep interrupting myself?: environment, habit and self-interruption
Dabbish, Mark and González analyse many hours of observed task switching by individuals in three high-technology information work organisations. Self-interruptions make up a large share of task switching, yet most earlier research addressed external interruptions. The analysis suggests that self-interruption depends on the organisational environment and on individual differences, and also on the external interruptions a person experiences. People in open office environments interrupt themselves at a higher rate, and are more likely to interrupt themselves to return to solitary work tied to their central working spheres.
Dabbish, Mark and González analyse many hours of observed task switching by individuals in three high-technology information work organisations. Self-interruptions make up a large share of task switching, yet most earlier research addressed external interruptions. The analysis suggests that self-interruption depends on the organisational environment and on individual differences, and also on the external interruptions a person experiences. People in open office environments interrupt themselves at a higher rate, and are more likely to interrupt themselves to return to solitary work tied to their central working spheres.
Written from the abstract as shown on the OpenAlex record, read 2026-11-04.
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Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '11), 3127-3130. doi:10.1145/1978942.1979405.