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Regina Nishiyama

English 1302

Mr. W Nolen

13 February 2022

Isolation Affecting Productivity

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the lives of people all over the world in many

negative ways. Besides physical, measurable data on how COVID-19 affects health, researchers

are still trying to figure out the mental aspect of COVID. A major attribute of this pandemic and

the mental health affects is the time people have spent in isolation. Isolation in itself comes with

negative effects to mental health and mixing the effects of isolation with a new and unknown

virus has been a terrain many people are still navigating. This article covers the effects of

isolation and how well one is able to be productive versus when they are not isolated.

Many people have gone from living their regular day to day lives, and then instantly

having to stay home and stay put because they contracted COVID-19. This is exactly how the

experiment started with my subject. They spent three days at school, practice, and work going

through their daily routine and getting their work done. After those three days the subject

contracted covid, and had to be put into isolation. Because the subject lives at home with their

family who did not contract the virus, they were completely isolated and spent ten days in their

room. Food and any other necessities were brought to their door to avoid contact with anyone,

and making them as isolated as possible.

Using the screen time average from a span of six days, provided from an iPhone, the

number of hours spent on the phone are able to show how productive the subject was that day. If

the screen time was high, the subject spent less time being productive and more time using the
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iPhone for entertainment. Three days of screen time where the subject was not in isolation due to

COVID-19 were compared to three days of screen time where the subject was in isolation.

Productivity was also measured by the amount of homework or time studying the subject was

able to do by the end of the day.

On the first non-isolated day the subject accumulated a total of eight hours and twenty-

five minutes of screen time and was able to finish reading two articles and one assignment for

two different classes. On the second non-isolated day, the subject spent seven hours and thirty-

four minutes on their phone and was able to finish three assignments for two different classes.

On the third non-isolated day, the subject recorded five hours and thirty-six minutes of screen

time and finished one quiz and read one two chapters for two different classes. After these three

days, the subject was put into isolation due to COVID-19, and noticeably their screen time went

up and productivity went down due to the negative effects of the isolation. On the first isolated

day, the subject accumulated fifteen hours and fifty-seven minutes of screen time, almost twice

the time compared to the first non-isolated day. On the second isolated day, the subject spent

eighteen hours and fifty-two minutes on their phone and still made no improvement on studying

on homework. On the third isolated day, the subject recorded seventeen hours and five minutes

of screen time and only did one assignment for one class.

Noticeably, the data collected from the first three days to the last three days, doubles

denoting less productivity. The numbers collected allow for a simple conclusion: isolation has a

negative effect on productivity. According to the subject, being in the same environment for

relaxation and work made them feel like they were “never able to walk away to relax and forget

about work” in order to have motivation to do their work. The subject also stated that “isolation

kept [them] feeling overwhelmed and unmotivated to advance on work.” The subject also shared
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that “spending time on [their] phone allowed them to feel less isolated from everyone, and so

[they] continued to spend more time on it in order to feel less alone.” The following emotional

data accounts for why the screen time doubled and emphasizes the negative effects of isolation

on productivity.

While the research aforementioned, was conducted on only one subject, Toscano and

Zappala were able to conduct research measuring remote work satisfaction during the COVID-19

pandemic on a larger scale of people. They used a 15 question 5-point Likert scale questionnaire

on a group of 265 people ranging from age and gender, to assess the feelings people had while

working from home. According to the article, “results show that social isolation is negatively

related to remote work satisfaction” (Toscano, Zappala 2020). They were able to back this

conclusion up with a line graph showing a negative correlation between remote work satisfaction

and social isolation (Toscano, Zappala 2020). This information is relevant because it highlights

the negative effects the COVID-19 isolation had on the productivity of those who were

navigating working from home.

The two different experiments lead readers to the same conclusion that isolation due to

COVID-19 has negative effects on productivity. Although the first experiment was simpler and

on a smaller scale, the results still showed a decrease in productivity during isolation. The second

experiment was able to find that isolation does decrease productivity, but the more a subject is

worried about COVID-19, the more it affects their productivity and stress levels.

Although a similar larger scale experiment has been done, this experiment is able to add

the effects of screen time reducing the feeling of isolation while negatively affecting

productivity. This is substantial because although the subject was able to find a way to decrease
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the negative effects isolation has on mental health, such as feelings of loneliness, the loss of

productivity poses a new problem: how to feel less isolated while still being productive.

One would assume that removing all distractions and isolating themselves would help

them improve productivity, but from the aforementioned research, data shows that isolation

negatively affects productivity. The first study was able to provide how a subject would use their

iPhone as a way to feel less isolated and in turn negatively affect their productivity. The second

study adds to this information by providing more evidence that isolation is not good for

productivity.
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Work Cited

Toscano, Ferdinando, and Salvatore Zappalà. “Social Isolation and Stress as Predictors of

Productivity Perception and Remote Work Satisfaction during the COVID-19

Pandemic: The Role of Concern about the Virus in a Moderated Double Mediation.”

MDPI, Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, 24 Nov. 2020,

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/23/9804.