A Productivity Pit Stop Initiative
Interruption Creep
Measure how much capacity the Interruption Creep drain is costing your team every month
Your Team
Type of Work
What kind of work does your team primarily do? This affects how long it takes to recover focus after each interruption.
How Often Does Interruption Creep Hit?
Research* shows Interruption Creep costs far more than the time each interruption takes:
- A 2-minute interruption can drain far more in lost momentum and recovery time
- Complex work takes significantly longer to resume than routine tasks
- Most people are interrupted every 3 to 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?
How Long Does Each Interruption Last?
On average, how long is each interruption? Think of the typical knock on the door, Teams message, or colleague question.
Your Interruption Creep — The Drain
This represents 0% of your team's monthly capacity draining away through interruption and focus recovery.
And this does not include the quality cost — decisions made without sufficient thought, errors from constant task switching, or the deep work that never happens because sustained focus is never reached.
Plug this drain this week
The number above is an estimate. Here is how to measure your own reality — and start plugging the drain.
Ready to plug this drain?
If Interruption Creep is affecting your team, a 20-minute conversation can identify the practical fixes to apply straight away.
I invite you to join me in a 20-minute conversationYour biggest drain is the best place to start. If you want a broader picture, explore the others below.