The Tyranny of the Ping: How Not to Be a Drug-Dealer at Work

In today’s volatile economic and geopolitical climate, where ambiguity and complexity dominate the business landscape, one asset has emerged as paramount: executive focus. For seasoned leaders navigating uncertainty, the ability to cultivate deep attention, sustain long-range thinking, and foster an organization’s capacity for meaningful work is no longer a luxury—it is an imperative. Yet this very capacity is under siege, not by the forces of the market or the competition, but by omnipresent distractions of our own making.

Distraction (especially through the use of electronics), long considered a youth problem, is now an executive crisis. Leaders, managers, and employees alike are caught in a paradox: as our workplaces have become more digitally enabled and hybrid-by-design, our ability to focus has diminished. This is a self-imposed leadership crisis and its deeper implications are sobering.

But there are things we can do.

Some Basics: The Digital Drain and Human Capacity

Neuroscientific research has demonstrated that screen time, particularly in the form of frequent interruptions and multitasking, depletes the brain’s capacity for executive function (Rosen et al.). These functions include planning, decision-making, emotional regulation, and cognitive flexibility—the very capacities senior leaders must maintain under pressure. The human brain, optimized through evolution for deep work and sustained problem-solving, is now being rewired for novelty, speed, and distraction (the very hallmarks of ineffective leadership).

This shift is not simply a question of productivity. The deleterious effects of screen-mediated distraction include shortened attention spans, reduced intersubjective attunement (our ability to resonate emotionally and cognitively with others), heightened anxiety, compromised emotional regulation, sleep deprivation, and an erosion of our ability to delay gratification—a critical trait in both leadership and strategy (Gazzaley and Rosen). These changes mirror what Sherry Turkle has described as a degradation from real conversation to superficial connection, where presence is sacrificed for performative engagement.

The Problem, Part 1: Hybrid Work and Getting Attention

While the move toward hybrid work was, and remains, a positive adaptation to the needs of modern workers, it has also inadvertently intensified the pressure to appear "always on." The physical absence from the office has led to a digital overcompensation. Workers, uncertain of how their contributions are perceived in a disembodied environment, turn to rapid responses on Slack, email, and Teams to demonstrate their value. Ironically, this drive to be visible leads to an addiction to visibility tools, which in turn undermines the very focus that true productivity demands.

This phenomenon finds its roots in legacy organizational cultures that equate visibility with value. In such environments, trust is fragile, and control mechanisms remain dominant, even in a hybrid setup. What emerges is a culture of performative busyness, rather than one of real generative productivity. As sociologist Hartmut Rosa noted, modern acceleration is not merely a technical phenomenon, but a cultural one: speed becomes a surrogate for depth.

The Problem – Part 2: Peak Performance? What Even Is That?

Flow, as defined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, is the mental state in which a person is fully immersed in an activity, experiencing energized focus and deep enjoyment. It is the bedrock of peak performance (a concept touted, yet poorly defined, by many top corporations). But flow requires sustained periods of undisturbed attention. It cannot arise amidst constant pings and check-ins. Research shows it takes an average of 23 uninterrupted minutes to return to deep work after giving in to a distraction (Mark et al.). When was the last time you enjoyed 23 uninterrupted minutes?

When hybrid work environments are structured around responsiveness rather than results, the outcome is a fragmentation of attention across departments, projects, and teams. Instead of enhanced flexibility, we encounter collective cognitive friction and change resistance. The organizational capacity to think deeply, strategically, and collaboratively is compromised, not by laziness or resistance, but by a neurobiological incapacity induced by design. That’s right – it isn’t a choice; it’s biology. Expecting maximal productivity as well as immediate responsiveness is not only operationally paradoxical, it is biologically contradictory.

The Cultural Antidote: Operationalizing Trust and Focus

The answer is not a retreat into traditionalism. As I’ve observed in industry innumerable times, recalling workers back to the office en masse or instituting draconian monitoring systems only deepens the mistrust and demoralization that underlie the problem. Instead, executives must move toward a culture of operationalized trust—a deliberate architecture of behavioral norms, leadership modeling, and performance metrics that value output over activity, impact over impression.

This means training leaders and teams to understand the neuroscience of attention and distraction-addiction, and how this science is active in the very teams they lead everyday. It means designing workflows that protect deep work time and discourage hyper-responsiveness. It means rethinking how we communicate expectations, measure performance, and model executive behavior. Leaders who remain tethered to email all day send a powerful signal that distraction is the expected standard. Like drug-dealers, they wire their followers to pursue and maintain the distraction addiction.

Critically, we must teach our organizations to reclaim the lost art of delayed gratification. From strategy formulation to product development, the most meaningful work requires time, ambiguity, and discomfort. But in a culture addicted to instant feedback, this discomfort is often pathologized. As such, leaders are challenged to model the patience and discipline that true innovation requires.

Beyond Productivity: The Moral Cost of Distraction

There is also a deeper cost at play here—a human one. Philosopher Byung-Chul Han argues that we are becoming a "burnout society," not because we are forced to work too hard, but because we are compelled to self-optimize constantly through technology. In this mode, executives become technocratic machines rather than meaning-makers and strategizers.

But organizations are not machines. They are ecosystems of human beings seeking significance, not just success. The erosion of focus is not just an operational problem; it is a human one. When attention is fragmented, meaning disappears. And when meaning disappears, performance follows.

What You Can Do About It

In uncertain times, the leaders who will thrive are not those who respond the fastest, but those who dare to think, reclaim attention, and rewire their cultures for depth, trust, and true human performance, in order to respond cogently and incisively. This requires more than good intentions. It requires conscious design, courageous modeling, and an understanding of the psychology and neurobiology of work. The future belongs to the focused; and the focused will be those bold enough to reclaim their focus in an age of distraction.

As someone who has walked alongside countless senior leaders navigating these tensions across industries, I invite you to consider: What might become possible in your organization if focus were not the exception, but the norm? What new levels of innovation, engagement, and strategic clarity might emerge if your people were free not just to perform, but to actually think?

Dr. JP Gedeon works with senior executives and leadership teams at critical inflection points — where power, culture, and personal psychology intersect. He originated the CD Model of Transformative Leadership – a proven scientifically-validated model of corporate leadership, designed to empower an organization to peak effectiveness and output. Known for bringing precision, clarity, and depth to complex transformations, he is a prime resource for leaders when performance isn’t enough, and alignment becomes non-negotiable.

Connect with Dr. Gedeon on LinkedIn or at consult@transformativedirections.com

Works Cited

Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2008.

Gazzaley, Adam, and Larry D. Rosen. The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High-Tech World. MIT Press, 2016.

Han, Byung-Chul. The Burnout Society. Stanford University Press, 2015.

Mark, Gloria, et al. "The Cost of Interrupted Work: More Speed and Stress." Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2008.

Rosen, Larry D., et al. "Media and Technology Use Predicts Ill-Being Among Children, Preteens and Teenagers Independent of the Negative Health Impacts of Exercise and Eating Habits." Computers in Human Behavior, vol. 35, 2014, pp. 364-375.

Turkle, Sherry. Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age. Penguin, 2015.

Rosa, Hartmut. Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity. Columbia University Press, 2015.