![]() The participants who read an immersive story while doing the exercise persisted for 10% longer than those in the control group, whereas looking at a beautiful image accompanied by pleasant, but non-immersive music did not increase persistence (despite participants rating the experience as more enjoyable). In one study, we asked three groups of participants to do a simple physical exercise for as long as they could while concurrently doing a second activity: The control group looked at a dot moving across a screen, the second group looked at a pleasant underwater image and listened to piano music, and the third group read an immersive story. Next, we were interested in comparing tangential immersion to some of the other common approaches to increasing persistence described above. This small intervention made a big difference: On average, those who watched the more immersive video brushed their teeth 30% longer than those who watched the less immersive video. While they brushed, one group was shown a video clip of beautiful nature scenes accompanied by music and nature sounds, while the other group watched a much more immersive documentary video clip about bears and wolves. We informed participants that the longer they brushed, the cleaner their teeth would be, and then instructed them to brush for as long as they wanted. We first documented this effect through a simple experiment designed to measure the impact of tangential immersion on how long participants brush their teeth. Tangential Immersion Decreases Boredom and Increases Persistence But if there is a second activity in which we can immerse ourselves concurrently with the low-attention task, it can occupy that excess attention, reducing boredom and thus increasing persistence. We experience boredom when doing tasks that require less attention than we have available, and this leads us to quit those tasks prematurely. Why does this work? Fundamentally, the mind seeks to be engaged. We call this concept tangential immersion. Rather than endlessly attempting to make boring tasks less boring, it can sometimes be more effective instead to pair these activities with other tasks that demand more attention. Oftentimes, strategies designed to increase persistence will involve changing something about the work itself - but you can only make washing the dishes so exciting or intellectually stimulating. My coauthors and I conducted a series of studies with more than 2,000 participants and found that in many cases, people stop working on tasks prematurely not because they aren’t motivated enough, but because the tasks inherently do not demand enough attention. My recent research, however, suggests that for tasks that don’t require a lot of attention, there may be a better approach. For instance, electric toothbrush developers have started adding timers to their brushes, companies are increasingly offering incentives to encourage employees to get more exercise, and managers are implementing various gamification strategies to make employees’ work more fun. These findings have direct implications for how we design products and policies. Studies have shown that people may persist longer when they monitor their progress, receive rewards, or when a task is made more fun. Researchers have explored this question from many angles, seeking to understand how we can cultivate perseverance in ourselves and in those we care about. What does it take to persist when work is boring? Of course, it’s not always easy to get ourselves to persevere in these tasks, even if we know we should. Whether it’s washing the dishes, filing papers, entering data, or any of the countless menial yet critical tasks that keep our homes, organizations, and communities running, we all have less-than-exciting tasks we have to do. ![]() We all try to spend our days doing things that feel engaging - but the reality is, there’s a lot of boring work that must also be done. This has implications not only for individuals, but also more managers looking to help their teams stay on track, organizations looking to encourage healthy practices, and product designers looking to improve customer retention. As a result, pairing boring work with a secondary task that requires more attention can be an effective strategy to boost engagement and thus persistence. In this article, the author describes how a concept called tangential immersion can help anyone persevere in a boring task: Through a series of studies with more than 2,000 participants, she and her coauthors found that people often quit boring tasks prematurely because they don’t take up enough of their attention to keep them engaged. ![]() While we all do our best to fill our personal and professional lives with engaging activities, there are countless menial, yet critical tasks that keep our organizations running - and we only stand to benefit by finding ways to get better at doing them.
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