Unexpected Interruptions Can Boost Creativity

Long work interruptions are usually seen as detrimental, causing losses in productivity as operations grind to a halt. But when a fire at a supplier’s factory forced a temporary shutdown at the plant of a large European manufacturer of consumer goods, Hamburg University of Technology’s Tim Schweisfurth and a colleague—Anne Greul, then a doctoral student at the Technical University of Munich—found a surprising upside: The idleness led to an outpouring of ideas for improvements. The conclusion: Unexpected interruptions can boost creativity.

Professor Schweisfurth, defend your research.

Schweisfurth: We discovered this when we looked at the online system the company used to collect plant workers’ ideas and suggestions. People could enter submissions whenever they were on-site. Some proposed small changes, like replacing worn tools; others, major ones, such as a new paint-ordering system that saved the firm €280,000 a year. The 8,500 employees in the part of the plant that shut down were sent home for four days. In the three weeks after they returned to work, they produced 58% more ideas than uninterrupted employees did. In addition, their ideas were higher quality: Managers rated the accepted submissions and determined that those from sidelined employees were roughly three percentage points better than those from other workers.

HBR: I thought interruptions were bad for creativity. That’s why I keep my phone in silent mode when I’m working.

It seems to depend on how much attention remains on the original task and how much is diverted to other things. We also studied an unexpected interruption at the plant that didn’t lead to idle time: a flood that required employees to clean up the damage. That incident lowered creative performance because workers had to switch their attention to the new task. A similar thing happens when your focus immediately shifts after a social media app beeps to signal a new post. So you probably should keep your phone in silent mode. But maybe get up from your desk spontaneously and go for a long walk every now and then.

How about taking a long vacation?

There are many good reasons to take a vacation, but our research doesn’t suggest it will improve your creativity at work, because it wouldn’t be an unexpected interruption. When we looked at a third kind of interruption at the plant—extended weekends—we found no increase in employee suggestions after people returned to work. We think the reason has to do with so-called attention residue—the sweet spot for creativity. It’s when our minds continue to mull over something that’s important to us even after we’ve moved on to another activity. Think of all the times you’ve had a “Eureka!” moment in the shower or while pushing a cart around the grocery store. Those insights all resulted from your brain’s behind-the-scenes perseveration. When we do something that allows us to totally disengage, such as taking a long weekend or a vacation, we don’t experience the same attention residue, so we don’t have the same kinds of breakthroughs.

So should managers periodically cut the power to the building? Should I occasionally unplug my Wi-Fi router?

Oh God, no. The productivity loss when a plant or an office goes dark is much larger than the creativity gain; it’s not even close. But we should accept that unplanned work interruptions will inevitably happen. Supply chains fail, forcing factories to wait for replacement parts. In some European countries entire quarters of cities, including many office buildings, may be evacuated for days on end because an old aircraft bomb is being dismantled. Assembly lines clog and break down, and so on. Managers need to be ready to take advantage of such things.

Any suggestions for how they can do that?

First, they should ensure that employees have access to an idea management system at home so that they can easily log new ideas as they bubble up. Second, they could look at dynamic incentives. The plant we studied offered a fairly hefty financial reward to workers whose suggestions were implemented: 10% of the value of the idea. One caveat, though: Our research didn’t explore interruptions that were emotionally charged—like the one experienced by workers in Manhattan in the aftermath of 9/11. It goes without saying that managers need to treat those sorts of interruptions differently. Trying to spur creativity should be the last thing on their minds.

Could people be more creative when they work remotely, because they’re more likely to have idle time if they’re not commuting?

We don’t know. It could be just the opposite. Evening commutes—not part of the routine for people working from home—might be a classic opportunity for attention residue, although people might not bother to submit their ideas once they get home or come in to work the next day, and they might be too cognitively depleted to do much creative thinking. And extended periods of remote work could be a burden on attention if employees’ personal lives are always interrupting their professional tasks. However, forcing yourself to take impromptu breaks might replicate the conditions in our study and promote creativity.

Google famously has a “20% rule,” whereby employees have one day a week of unstructured time to spend on projects outside their normal responsibilities. Does that leverage the same sort of effect you captured?

It might have benefits to the company in that unstructured time should boost the implementation of side projects. But I wouldn’t expect it to lead to more new ideas. Employees presumably would focus on new tasks rather than concentrate on their usual ones.

However, companies could take other steps to encourage employees to submit more and better ideas. If a firm provides mental health days, it could make some of them impromptu—perhaps announcing one with only a few days’ notice so that people would be less likely to schedule activities that would consume their attention. Companies could also integrate periods of idleness randomly into employees’ workdays—for instance, by concluding a meeting earlier than planned. Such things would simulate unexpected interruptions and might yield the same positive effects.

Would your results hold for non-Western cultures?

It’s possible, but this probably isn’t a universal phenomenon. Some cultures are more comfortable with uncertainty than others, so in some places interruptions could cause undue stress and hurt creativity. And in some countries companies aren’t required to pay workers during the sorts of interruptions we studied, which also might dampen the effect. Our finding is surprising, but it’s preliminary, and further research is needed to validate it.