“Just quickly checking my phone.”
Sound familiar?
Just seeing whether there is a new message.
Quickly scrolling through LinkedIn between two tasks.
Glancing at your screen during a meeting.
Seeing a notification come in and immediately losing your concentration.
And then: craving something sweet, having another coffee, and going home tired at the end of the day.
Many employees think that using their phone in between tasks is relaxing. A mini-break. A moment to focus on something else.
But often, the opposite happens. Your brain has to keep switching: from task to message, from conversation to notification, from focus to stimulus.
That costs energy, even when you do not notice it straight away.
Research shows that even the mere presence of your smartphone can affect your available cognitive capacity. Even when you are not using it, part of your attention may still be occupied with resisting the urge to check it. This leaves less mental capacity for the task in front of you (Ward et al., 2017).
Recent workplace research also shows that personal smartphone use during working hours can fragment the workday. Phone-related interruptions are associated with frustration, unfinished tasks and increased rumination after work (Derks et al., 2025).
The connection with quick sugars makes this even more relevant. When you feel tired or unfocused, you are more likely to reach for a short energy boost: something sweet, a snack or another coffee. This may give you a temporary lift, but it often does not help restore your energy in a sustainable way.
Vitality does not start with major changes, but with small, conscious choices throughout your working day.
At Moovs, we look at vitality from four perspectives: physical vitality, mental clarity, emotional resilience and meaningful, sustainable employability.
In this post, we focus on mental clarity and physical vitality: how can you prevent yourself from unknowingly losing energy through constant stimuli, frequent switching and quick energy boosts?
A simple first step:
These small choices may seem simple, but they help you maintain your attention more effectively and prevent your energy from gradually draining throughout the day.
At Moovs, we help organisations make vitality and wellbeing tangible in the workplace. In our training programmes, we work with topics such as energy management, focus, recovery time, breathing, nutrition and sustainable behavioural change.
Would you like to explore how vitality and wellbeing can play a greater role within your organisation? Get in touch with us for a no-obligation conversation.
Or download our Vitality Wheel: a practical overview that helps you look at vitality more broadly through four perspectives, each of which can be translated into small, practical actions in the workplace.
You take the first step, we inspire the next.
Group Moovs empowers organizations through innovative learning, leadership development, coaching, and immersive training experiences. We specialize in leadership, human behavior, and measurable learning impact to help teams thrive in a fast-changing world.
