How many days per year do you lose to distraction? See the real cost of notifications, phone checks, and context switching — in hours, money, and missed opportunities.
The first proper distraction cost calculator. Based on Gloria Mark's UC Irvine research (23 min to refocus after each interruption) and APA studies on multitasking penalty (40% productivity loss). Input your daily distraction sources — phone notifications, phone checks (avg 144/day!), email, Slack/Teams, meetings, social media scrolling, YouTube, coworker interruptions. See an animated Focus Score (0-100), pie chart of deep work vs distraction, financial lifetime cost at your hourly rate, equivalences (languages learned, books read, degrees earned), a "cut distractions in half" simulator, and your top 3 personalized fixes based on biggest drains.
This is from Dr. Gloria Mark's landmark research at UC Irvine (2008): it takes on average 23 minutes and 15 seconds to fully return focus to a task after an interruption. This is "attention residue" — your brain still processing the interrupted task.
No. A University of London study showed multitasking temporarily drops IQ by 10 points — more than cannabis does. The APA estimates task-switching can cost up to 40% of productive time.
Americans check their phones 144 times per day (Asurion 2023, up from 96 in 2019). Android users average 46 push notifications per day (Dscout). Knowledge workers receive an average of 121 emails/day.
Yes. Cal Newport and Deep Work practitioners consistently report reclaiming 2-4 hours of productive time by turning off notifications, batching email (2-3x/day instead of every 6 min), and using Do Not Disturb during focus blocks.
Related: focus loss calculator, distraction cost calculator, productivity loss calculator, attention span calculator, deep work calculator, notification impact calculator, phone addiction calculator, time wasted calculator, context switching cost, attention residue calculator, interruption cost calculator