01 Interruption Tax Calculator (Capacity)

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 recover focus after an interruption.

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

How Often?

Research* shows interruptions cost far more than the time they take:

A 2-minute interruption can cost far more in lost momentum
Complex work takes significantly longer to resume than routine tasks
Most people are interrupted every 3-5 minutes in open-plan environments
Only 1 in 20 interrupted tasks is resumed at the same point

*Sources:

- Interruption recovery: Gloria Mark, UC Irvine, "The Cost of Interrupted Work" (replicated 2023)

- Focus fragmentation: Microsoft Research, "Productivity and Distraction" study

- Task resumption: Iqbal and Bailey, CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Think about a typical day for someone on your team. How often are they pulled off what they are working on?

A few times — maybe 5 interruptions a day Regularly — around 10-15 a day Constantly — 20 or more a day Let me enter my own estimate

Average number of interruptions per person per day

How Long Do They Last?

On average, how long is each interruption? Think of the typical knock on the door, Teams message, or colleague question.

Quick ones — under 5 minutes Medium — around 10 minutes Long ones — 20 minutes or more Let me enter my own estimate

Average duration per interruption (minutes)

Your Interruption Tax

Monthly Capacity Lost to Interruption 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 interruption time per month, plus 0 of recovery time — the hidden cost most organisations never count. Your team loses an average of 0 per person per day just getting back to where they were.

This represents 0% of your team's monthly capacity lost to interruption and recovery

And this does not include the quality cost — decisions made without sufficient thought, errors from context switching, or the deep work that never happens because sustained focus is never reached.

What you can do this week

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

Track for one day. Keep a simple tally — a tick on paper or a note on your phone each time you are pulled off a task. Just count. Do not judge.

Note the gap. When interrupted, write down the time. Write down when you returned to focused work. The gap between those two numbers is your personal recovery cost.

Do it for a week. At the end of the week, multiply your daily tally by your average gap. That is your personal interruption cost — your number, not ours.

Share it with your team. Not as a complaint — as a conversation. Ask them to do the same. When a team measures its own interruption cost together, something shifts. That conversation is where 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 Email Tax Follow-Through Tax Alignment Tax