←back to thread

The cost of interrupted work (2023)

(blog.oberien.de)
282 points _vaporwave_ | 1 comments | 23 Aug 25 21:45 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
didibus ◴[24 Aug 25 00:44 UTC] No.45000291[source]▶
I think the original source is a 2006 Gallup interview with the researcher Gloria Mark you can read here: https://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/23146/too-many-inter...

> GMJ: How long does it take to get back to work after an interruption?

> Mark: There's good news and bad news. To have a uniform comparison, we looked at all work that was interrupted and resumed on the same day. The good news is that most interrupted work was resumed on the same day -- 81.9 percent -- and it was resumed, on average, in 23 minutes and 15 seconds, which I guess is not so long.

replies(3): >>45000333 #>>45002007 #>>45002661 #
kaffekaka ◴[24 Aug 25 07:01 UTC] No.45002007[source]▶
I interpret this and the article as saying that those 23 minutes are not spent trying to resume the original task, but on the interruption itself and the other intervening tasks that are worked on before returning to the original task.

If that interpretation is correct, those 23 mins are not wasted in confusion but simply spent on other things.

Do i read it correctly?

replies(2): >>45002743 #>>45005748 #
1. glenstein ◴[24 Aug 25 09:23 UTC] No.45002743[source]▶
That's a great question and after rereading the quote I honestly couldn't tell.

After mentioning the time, they do talk about how it also takes time to return to work from an interruption. But on my read it seemed a bit ambiguous whether the time was from the interruption itself or from the combination of the interruption and the time after the interruption before you return to productive work.