.2Email Tax Calculator (Capacity) - Productivity Pit Stop

Your Team Details

How many people are on this team?

Type of Work

What kind of work does your team primarily do? This affects how long it takes to refocus after checking email.

Mostly routine and administrative — emails, scheduling, standard processes Mixed — some routine, some thinking and problem-solving Mostly complex — analysis, writing, client work, creative or strategic thinking

Email Volume

Research* shows email is one of the biggest hidden drains on team productivity:

The average knowledge worker receives 120 emails per day
People spend up to 28% of their working week on email
Most emails are read within 6 seconds of arriving — breaking focus instantly
It takes an average of 64 seconds to refocus after checking a new email notification

*Sources:

- Email volume: Radicati Group, "Email Statistics Report" (2024)

- Time spent on email: McKinsey Global Institute, "The Social Economy" report

- Refocus time: University of California Irvine, workplace distraction research

On a typical day, roughly how many emails does each person on your team receive?

Manageable — around 30-50 emails a day Busy — around 50-100 emails a day Overwhelming — 100 or more a day Let me enter my own estimate

Average emails received per person per day

Processing Time

On average, how long does it take to read, decide, and action or file each email?

Quick — under a minute to scan, decide, and move on Medium — around 3 minutes to read, think, and respond Involved — 5 minutes or more to read, decide, and action

How Often Do You Check?

How often does a typical person on your team check their inbox during the day? Every check is an interruption — even if nothing is there.

Disciplined — 3 or 4 scheduled times a day Regular — roughly every hour Always open — checking constantly throughout the day

Your Email Tax

Monthly Capacity Lost to Email Friction

0 hours

0 hours per year

Full-Time Equivalent (FTE)

Full-time people worth of capacity lost annually

What this includes: 0 of direct email processing time per month, plus 0 of refocus time after each inbox check — the hidden cost most people never count. Your team loses an average of 0 per person per day just on email alone.

This represents 0% of your team's monthly capacity consumed by email processing and inbox switching

And this does not include the decisions delayed because they were threaded through email chains, the messages missed because they were buried, or the trust eroded when responses arrive too late.

What you can do this week

The number above is an estimate. Here is how to measure your own reality --- and start shifting it.

Count your checks. For one day, put a tick on paper every time you open your inbox. Do not change anything — just count. Most people are shocked by their own number.

Set two or three email windows. Choose fixed times to process email — morning, midday, late afternoon. Outside those windows, close the inbox. Notice what happens to your focus.

Triage — do not browse. When you open your inbox, make one instant decision on each email: file it, act on it, or trash it. Then move it accordingly. Do not read and re-read. Do not leave it sitting. Just decide.

Share the experiment with your team. Ask everyone to try the same thing for one week. At the end of the week, compare notes. That conversation — about how email actually works in your team — is where the real change begins.

Want help removing this friction?

If this friction point is affecting your team, a short conversation can often identify practical ways to remove it quickly.

Book a 20-minute conversation

Want to explore the other friction points?

Your top item is the best place to start. If you want a broader view, you can explore the others below.

Meeting Tax Interruption Tax Follow-Through Tax Alignment Tax