Context switching calculator
How many times a day are you pulled away from what you're doing? See how much focus that costs you a day and a year.
- In a year
- 529 hours: 66 working days
- What that time is paid
- $20,125 a year
- Halve them
- Half as many interruptions gives you back 1h 9m a day
An upper bound: some refocusing overlaps other work. Over 230 working days a year.
Interruptions add up
Focus lost in an eight-hour day, at 10 minutes and at 23 minutes to refocus each time:
| Interruptions a day | 10 min each | 23 min each | Hours a year (23 min) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | 20m | 46m | 176 |
| 4 | 40m | 1h 32m | 353 |
| 6 | 1h | 2h 18m | 529 |
| 10 | 1h 40m | 3h 50m | 882 |
| 15 | 2h 30m | 5h 45m | 1,323 |
What the research says
- Getting back takes a while. Gloria Mark and colleagues found that office workers took about 23 minutes on average to return to an interrupted task.
- Part of your attention stays behind. Sophie Leroy (2009) called it “attention residue”: after switching, people kept thinking about the unfinished task, and did worse on the next one.
- Switching itself is slow. Experiments by Joshua Rubinstein, David Meyer and Jeffrey Evans (2001) found people lost time at every switch between tasks, more so when the tasks were complex or unfamiliar.
Meetings are the most expensive interruptions; the meeting cost calculator prices them. Our article on the cost of context switching has ways to cut it down.
Questions
What is context switching?
Moving your attention from one task to another: from writing to a message, from code to a meeting. Each switch has a cost, because your mind has to drop one set of details and load another, and part of it stays on the last task for a while.
Where does the 23-minute figure come from?
From Gloria Mark, a professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, who observed people at work and found it took them about 23 minutes on average to get back to an interrupted task, often after working on two other things in between. It's an average from field studies; plenty of switches cost less.
Isn't this an overestimate?
It's an upper bound. Not every interruption costs the full refocus time, and some of that time goes on other useful work. Choose 10 or 15 minutes for a more conservative estimate; even those add up to hours a week.
How do I reduce context switching?
Batch the small stuff: check email and messages at set times rather than as they arrive. Turn off notifications during focus blocks, keep one task in front of you, and write down the stray thoughts that pop up so you can deal with them later.
Further reading
- The real cost of context switchingEach switch between tasks costs minutes, and part of your attention stays behind. What the research says about context switching, and seven ways to switch less.
- How to focus better: 12 habits that workWhy focus comes easily some days and not others, and twelve simple habits that set up concentration: clear tasks, fixed sessions, no phone, steady sound and real breaks.
- How to stop checking your phone while you workWhy the phone is so hard to ignore, what research says about notifications and attention, and ten practical ways to check it less while you work.
More free tools
- Pomodoro timer25 minutes of focus, then a break. With a seat-belt chime.
- Deep work timer52/17, 50/10 or 90-minute blocks for deeper work.
- Pomodoro calculatorHow many Pomodoros your tasks take, and when you'll finish.
- Eisenhower matrixDo, schedule, delegate or drop: sort your to-do list.
- Meeting cost calculatorWhat a meeting costs in salary and in lost focus time.
- Reading time calculatorHow long a text takes to read, skim or say out loud.