Interruptions aren't just annoying; they are biologically expensive. How AI agents can shield your attention and restore deep work.
It starts innocently enough. You are ten minutes into drafting a strategy document. You are just starting to find your flow.
Then, a notification slides onto your screen. "Quick question: Do you have the Q3 deck?"
It seems trivial. You switch tabs, find the deck, paste the link, and switch back. The whole interaction took 45 seconds.
But when you return to your document, the flow is gone. You stare at the cursor. You re-read the last paragraph. You check your phone.
Research suggests it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to fully regain focus after an interruption.
That "45-second" favor didn't cost you 45 seconds. It cost you 24 minutes.
If you are interrupted three times in a morning—a Slack message, an email, a tap on the shoulder—you haven't just lost a few minutes. You have lost the entire morning.
We like to think of our brains as computers that can toggle instantly between tasks. But the biology tells a different story.
When you switch from Task A (Strategy Doc) to Task B (Slack Message), your attention doesn't cleanly transfer. A part of your cognitive processing power remains stuck on Task A. And when you switch back, a part of it remains stuck on Task B.
Sophie Leroy, a business professor at the University of Minnesota, coined the term "Attention Residue" to describe this phenomenon. Every time you switch contexts, you leave a little bit of your focus behind.
By 2 PM, after hundreds of context switches, your brain is covered in residue. You aren't just tired; your cognitive capacity is literally fragmented. You are trying to run a marathon with a sprained ankle.
The modern workplace is an interruption factory.
Tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Email are designed as "Push" systems. They allow anyone—a colleague, a client, a newsletter algorithm—to push a demand onto your screen at any time.
They prioritize speed of transmission over quality of attention. The sender gets the satisfaction of "sending it off their plate," but the receiver pays the price in broken focus.
We have normalized a culture where being "responsive" is conflated with being "productive." But they are often opposites. You can be incredibly responsive—replying to every message within 30 seconds—and produce absolutely zero value for your company.
The solution isn't to delete Slack or go back to carrier pigeons. The solution is to introduce a Shield.
This is one of the core design principles behind Elani. An AI agent shouldn't just help you do work faster; it should help you do work deeper.
We built Elani to act as a gatekeeper for your attention.
Instead of every email pinging your phone, Elani intercepts them. She reads them, understands the urgency, and makes a decision:
By holding back the non-urgent items, Elani allows you to process them in Batches. Instead of checking your inbox 50 times a day, you check your Briefing twice: once in the morning, once in the afternoon.
Elani presents the items, the context, and the drafted actions all at once. You enter "Manager Mode," approve ten decisions in five minutes, and then close the tab to return to "Maker Mode."
Let's look at two versions of the same Tuesday.
The Fragmented Day (Without a Shield):
The Batched Day (With Elani):
Your attention is the only resource you can't buy more of. In an economy that runs on knowledge work, the ability to focus deeply is a superpower.
Don't let the "quick questions" steal your superpower. Let Elani handle the noise, so you can handle the signal.