Short answer: often, yes: a phone in sight, notifications, clutter, talking nearby and a desk used for everything all pull attention without you deciding to give it. Take the 13-question audit to score your setup and get the changes that matter most, in order.
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Answer 13 quick questions about where and how you work.Think of a normal workday, not your best one. About 3 minutes.
The full method is in Leverage Your Environment. The audit finds the leaks. The book redesigns all five layers: deep-work and creative setups, making bad habits impossible, daily and weekly reset rituals, a portable kit for travel, and a 30-day plan measured in honest focus hours.
Willpower runs out; your surroundings don't. Leverage Your Environment works through two levers, cues (what's in sight gets done) and friction (every extra step cuts a behaviour), across five layers: the room, the screen, the people, the hours and the places you go. The audit asks about each layer and weights the answers:
Layer
What it checks
Weight
The screen
Phone location, notifications, blockers, batching
Highest: phone and notifications count most
The room
One place for work, clear desk, light, sound, air
High
The hours
Deep work in your peak hours, start ritual, blocks and breaks
Medium
The people
Who you work near, accountability
Medium
Other places
A third place for deep work, walking
Lower
Your score is the weighted share of points. "Do this afternoon" picks the changes that take minutes and no money; "biggest changes" lists your largest gaps by weight. The weights are our judgement based on the book and the research below, not a validated scale.
For a deeper check, the book's one-day audit: carry a notebook for a day and write every action you didn't decide to do, and the cue that fired it.
Techniques from the book behind this tool
This tool puts a few of the named techniques from Leverage Your Environment to work. Each line says how it relates to the tool.
The one-day environment audit: This 13-question audit is a quick version of the book's audit, scored by layer.
The five layers of your environment: The audit checks the room, the screen, the people, the hours and the places you go.
The two levers: cues and friction: Every suggested change either adds a good cue or adds friction to a distraction.
Notifications: only humans on the short list: Phone and notifications carry the highest weight in the score.
The website blocker, properly configured: Blockers are one of the screen-layer checks.
One place for one thing: A desk used only for work is one of the room checks.
The desk cleared to four objects: A clear desk is scored in the room layer.
Protect the peak: The hours layer asks whether deep work happens in your peak hours.
The start ritual: A start ritual is one of the hours checks.
The café effect: The audit asks whether you have a third place for deep work.
It can. In Ward and colleagues' 2017 "Brain Drain" study, people whose phone was in another room did better on tests of available cognitive capacity than people with the phone on the desk, even when it was face-down or switched off. The simplest fix is to leave it in another room while you work.
Is background noise bad for concentration?
Unpredictable noise, especially speech you can understand, is the most disruptive kind for focused work, which is why open-plan offices are hard. A door, noise-cancelling headphones or steady background sound that masks speech all help.
Do notifications and interruptions really cost that much?
Research on interrupted work (Mark, Gudith and Klocke, 2008) found people compensate for interruptions by working faster, but report more stress, frustration and effort. Turning off non-human notifications and batching email removes most interruptions at the source.
Does fresh air affect how well you think?
In a 2016 study by Allen and colleagues, office workers scored higher on decision-making tests in better-ventilated conditions with lower carbon dioxide and fewer volatile organic compounds. Open a window or step outside regularly.
Does walking help you think more creatively?
Oppezzo and Schwartz (2014) found walking increased creative idea generation, during the walk and shortly after. A walk outside at the start of the afternoon dip is a good use of low-focus time.
Sources
Ward, A. F., Duke, K., Gneezy, A., & Bos, M. W. (2017). Brain Drain: The mere presence of one's own smartphone reduces available cognitive capacity. Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 2(2). doi:10.1086/691462
Mark, G., Gudith, D., & Klocke, U. (2008). The cost of interrupted work: more speed and stress. Proceedings of CHI 2008. doi:10.1145/1357054.1357072
Hongisto, V. (2005). A model predicting the effect of speech of varying intelligibility on work performance. Indoor Air, 15(6). doi:10.1111/j.1600-0668.2005.00391.x
Allen, J. G., et al. (2016). Associations of cognitive function scores with carbon dioxide, ventilation, and volatile organic compound exposures in office workers. Environmental Health Perspectives, 124(6). doi:10.1289/ehp.1510037
Oppezzo, M., & Schwartz, D. L. (2014). Give your ideas some legs: The positive effect of walking on creative thinking. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 40(4). doi:10.1037/a0036577
Method: Leverage Your Environment (Asendify): the five layers, cues and friction, and the one-day audit.
Productivity education, not medical advice. If you have ongoing trouble concentrating, sleeping or with your mood, talk to a doctor.