No Task Left Behind? Examining the Nature of Fragmented Work
[COMPLETE ARTICLE READ IN FULL AT SOURCE, the author copy at ics.uci.edu, pp. 321 to 330, including all four tables, the limitations section and the reference list, and RE-READ IN FULL at source on the verification pass of 2026-10-22. The citation as carried in the sources file gives no DOI, so this entry is keyed on first author and year] Mark, G., Gonzalez, V. M., & Harris, J. (2005). 'No Task Left Behind? Examining the Nature of Fragmented Work.' In Proceedings of CHI 2005, Portland, Oregon, pp. 321 to 330. Gloria Mark first author, Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Science, University of California, Irvine, confirmed on the paper's own byline. Funded by the National Science Foundation under grant 0093496. DESIGN: one company, an outsourcing firm providing information technology and accounting services to financial bond management companies, given the pseudonym ITS, chosen as a fast-paced environment; two teams, JEB and AUG; TWENTY-FOUR people observed in detail, 7 managers, 9 analysts and 8 developers, fourteen from one team and ten from the other, fifteen collocated and nine distributed; two phases over thirteen months; each informant formally observed and timed for three and a half days, an average of 25 hours 42 minutes per person and over 700 formal hours in total; ethnographic shadowing with a stopwatch and notepad, timed to the second, no video permitted. The unit of analysis is the working sphere, a cluster of related events with a common goal, a group of people, its own resources and its own deadline. FINDINGS AS PRINTED: 11.7 working spheres a day, sd 2.4; 'The average length of time that the informants spent in central and peripheral working spheres was 11 min. 4 sec., (sd=18 min. 9 sec.) before switching to another working sphere or being interrupted'; 57.1 per cent of all working sphere segments interrupted, N = 2,246; internal interruptions 52.0 per cent against external 48.0 per cent, N = 1,282; 77.2 per cent of interrupted work resumed the same day; AND THE FIGURE, 'When people did resume work on the same day, it took an average length of time of 25 min. 26 sec (sd=54 min. 48 sec.)'; an average of 2.26 intervening working spheres, sd 2.79, before resumption. READ THE STANDARD DEVIATION: the spread is more than twice the mean. WHAT WAS MEASURED is elapsed clock time between an interrupted working sphere segment and the informant's return to that same working sphere, same day only, with interrupted work in the last working hour excluded; it is not recovery, not refocusing and not attention. THE AUTHOR'S OWN GLOSS, VERBATIM: 'This may seem like a relatively short amount of time, but it is also important to consider that before resuming work, our informants worked in an average of 2.26 (sd=2.79) working spheres.' FOUR FINDINGS THAT RUN AGAINST THE TRADE'S READING: interrupted segments lasted significantly LONGER before interruption than uninterrupted ones, 12 min 40 sec (sd 14 min 33 sec) against 8 min 58 sec (sd 14 min 43 sec), F(1,1)=26.14, p<.001, with their own gloss that 'The irony of the work day is that the longer people spend in a working sphere, (and thus we assume become more involved in it) the more likely it is to be interrupted'; interruptions are coded good or bad by content, the paper's summary being that 'interruptions that lead one to switch working spheres are in general far more disruptive than interruptions that concern one's current working sphere, which are even considered beneficial'; collocated workers were interrupted more AND worked longer stretches, 11 min 56 sec against 9 min 56 sec, t(1,2244)=3.21, p<.001, with 62.9 per cent of collocated segments interrupted against 49.3 per cent of distributed; and only 9.9 per cent of resumptions were externally initiated, self-resumed work returning in 21 min 28 sec against 61 min 37 sec, t(987)=7.05, p<.001. CONFIRMED VERBATIM ON THE VERIFICATION PASS: externally interrupted working spheres were resumed in 22 min 37 sec, sd 53 min 52 sec, against 29 min 1 sec, sd 55 min 43 sec, for internally interrupted ones, t(987)=1.92, p<.055, which does not reach the conventional threshold; morning working spheres were shorter than afternoon ones, t(1191)=4.71, p<.001. THEIR OWN LIMITS: 'it is very difficult to code activities during ethnographic observation without a video record (recording was not permitted)', and 'As we observed only one organization, we can only generalize our results to companies with similar characteristics: high pressure firms where many different tools are integral to work, and where people manage multiple activities.'
[COMPLETE ARTICLE READ IN FULL AT SOURCE, the author copy at ics.uci.edu, pp. 321 to 330, including all four tables, the limitations section and the reference list, and RE-READ IN FULL at source on the verification pass of 2026-10-22. The citation as carried in the sources file gives no DOI, so this entry is keyed on first author and year] Mark, G., Gonzalez, V. M., & Harris, J. (2005). 'No Task Left Behind? Examining the Nature of Fragmented Work.' In Proceedings of CHI 2005, Portland, Oregon, pp. 321 to 330. Gloria Mark first author, Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Science, University of California, Irvine, confirmed on the paper's own byline. Funded by the National Science Foundation under grant 0093496. DESIGN: one company, an outsourcing firm providing information technology and accounting services to financial bond management companies, given the pseudonym ITS, chosen as a fast-paced environment; two teams, JEB and AUG; TWENTY-FOUR people observed in detail, 7 managers, 9 analysts and 8 developers, fourteen from one team and ten from the other, fifteen collocated and nine distributed; two phases over thirteen months; each informant formally observed and timed for three and a half days, an average of 25 hours 42 minutes per person and over 700 formal hours in total; ethnographic shadowing with a stopwatch and notepad, timed to the second, no video permitted. The unit of analysis is the working sphere, a cluster of related events with a common goal, a group of people, its own resources and its own deadline. FINDINGS AS PRINTED: 11.7 working spheres a day, sd 2.4; 'The average length of time that the informants spent in central and peripheral working spheres was 11 min. 4 sec., (sd=18 min. 9 sec.) before switching to another working sphere or being interrupted'; 57.1 per cent of all working sphere segments interrupted, N = 2,246; internal interruptions 52.0 per cent against external 48.0 per cent, N = 1,282; 77.2 per cent of interrupted work resumed the same day; AND THE FIGURE, 'When people did resume work on the same day, it took an average length of time of 25 min. 26 sec (sd=54 min. 48 sec.)'; an average of 2.26 intervening working spheres, sd 2.79, before resumption. READ THE STANDARD DEVIATION: the spread is more than twice the mean. WHAT WAS MEASURED is elapsed clock time between an interrupted working sphere segment and the informant's return to that same working sphere, same day only, with interrupted work in the last working hour excluded; it is not recovery, not refocusing and not attention. THE AUTHOR'S OWN GLOSS, VERBATIM: 'This may seem like a relatively short amount of time, but it is also important to consider that before resuming work, our informants worked in an average of 2.26 (sd=2.79) working spheres.' FOUR FINDINGS THAT RUN AGAINST THE TRADE'S READING: interrupted segments lasted significantly LONGER before interruption than uninterrupted ones, 12 min 40 sec (sd 14 min 33 sec) against 8 min 58 sec (sd 14 min 43 sec), F(1,1)=26.14, p<.001, with their own gloss that 'The irony of the work day is that the longer people spend in a working sphere, (and thus we assume become more involved in it) the more likely it is to be interrupted'; interruptions are coded good or bad by content, the paper's summary being that 'interruptions that lead one to switch working spheres are in general far more disruptive than interruptions that concern one's current working sphere, which are even considered beneficial'; collocated workers were interrupted more AND worked longer stretches, 11 min 56 sec against 9 min 56 sec, t(1,2244)=3.21, p<.001, with 62.9 per cent of collocated segments interrupted against 49.3 per cent of distributed; and only 9.9 per cent of resumptions were externally initiated, self-resumed work returning in 21 min 28 sec against 61 min 37 sec, t(987)=7.05, p<.001. CONFIRMED VERBATIM ON THE VERIFICATION PASS: externally interrupted working spheres were resumed in 22 min 37 sec, sd 53 min 52 sec, against 29 min 1 sec, sd 55 min 43 sec, for internally interrupted ones, t(987)=1.92, p<.055, which does not reach the conventional threshold; morning working spheres were shorter than afternoon ones, t(1191)=4.71, p<.001. THEIR OWN LIMITS: 'it is very difficult to code activities during ethnographic observation without a video record (recording was not permitted)', and 'As we observed only one organization, we can only generalize our results to companies with similar characteristics: high pressure firms where many different tools are integral to work, and where people manage multiple activities.'
Written from the cOMPLETE ARTICLE READ IN FULL AT SOURCE, the author copy at ics.uci.edu, pp. 321 to 330, including all four tables, the limitations section and the reference list, and RE-READ IN FULL at source on the verification pass of 2026-10-22. The citation as carried in the sources file gives no DOI, so this entry is keyed on first author and year.
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Mark, G., Gonzalez, V. M., & Harris, J. (2005). 'No Task Left Behind? Examining the Nature of Fragmented Work.' Proceedings of CHI 2005, 321-330