We’re curled up on the couch at the end of another long day, finally getting a little refuge from the relentless busyness of modern life. Then, the smartphone lights up, announcing itself yet again, calling us back to the churn.

Our phone has already buzzed, dinged, and flashed red dots 85 times today, the North American average (Andrews et al, 2015). Each interruption has carved away a sliver of our time; each glow has pulled us into a digital world.

Still, we draw the phone back into our hands, spot the familiar red dot, and open the text message from our friend: Free tomorrow evening? I’d love to get in a game of pickleball! It’s punctuated by a smiley face, a racket emoji, and a sparkle emoji that quietly insists this is a great idea.

We tap out a quick response, I’m in! And that’s when something both familiar and strange happens.

The Doorway Effect

We’d set out to enjoy a little quiet, but now, before we know it, we’re carried away by something called the doorway effect, an easy-to-understand, surprisingly relatable phenomenon (Radvansky et al, 2011).

To explain it, imagine this: We’re in our home office, emails open on our laptop, our fingers flying across the keyboard, our body grounded in our chair. Then our stomach growls, so we close the laptop and wander into the kitchen for a snack. And the moment we cross the doorway, the emails evaporate. They just disappear from our minds, erased like they never mattered, and we’re suddenly thinking all about snacks, drinks, and dinner plans.

Why? The reason is simple and deeply human. Our brain is wired to remember what we’re doing as long........

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