These studies suggest the importance of considering daily news consumption patterns when trying to avoid unwanted TUTs. We expanded on these results in Study 2, where we found that general news media consumption was associated with greater TUT occurrence as well. Results showed that consuming news related to COVID-19 was associated with greater TUT occurrence. In Study 1, we specifically examined consumption of news related to the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic, as a current issue that relates to personally salient concerns. Accordingly, we ran two studies to examine the unique impact of news consumption on TUT occurrence. To prevent the disruptive nature of TUTs requires a better understanding of what factors can impact their occurrence. Not only are TUTs common, but they can also be disruptive during daily tasks requiring our focus. They are exemplified by experiences like planning your day while getting ready in the morning or thinking about dinner when driving home from work. Task-unrelated thoughts (TUTs) are common in everyday life. These findings highlight the importance of considering when we choose to consume news media and the value of examining contextual factors when studying TUTs in daily life. We speculate that the increase in TUTs was due to heightened salience of current concerns, cued by the news. We thus extended the association found between TUT and COVID-19-related news in Study 1, to any news topic in Study 2. TUT occurrence was predicted by general news consumption, with an increase in reports of TUT following consumption of news media in general. To extend these findings, we implemented Study 2 using similar methods, but focusing on the consumption of news media in general. We found that TUT occurrence was significantly predicted by COVID-19 news consumption, such that TUT occurrence increased with COVID-19 news consumption. Study 1 focused on the impact of news related to the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic, as a common and global concern. We thus utilized Ecological Momentary Assessment to survey participants throughout the day for ten days, on their TUTs and news consumption in two separate studies. However, this has not been thoroughly examined in everyday life settings. External factors such as news media serve as cues for these concerns, potentially increasing TUT occurrence. One factor that has previously been implicated as a source of TUT is personally salient concerns. This necessitates the examination of factors that modulate TUT occurrence in daily life. Task-unrelated thoughts (TUTs) are frequent distractions from our everyday tasks, which can reduce productivity and safety during task performance.
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