The best measurement of app switching we have found puts the cost at just under four hours a week, about 9% of work time: in a 2022 study of 137 people at three Fortune 500 companies, workers toggled between apps and websites nearly 1,200 times a day, and each switch cost a little over two seconds to reorient. Other research adds that interruptions raise stress even when people keep up their speed, and that an unfinished task keeps pulling attention after you move on.
This is a roundup of that research: who ran each study, how many people it covered, what it found, and what it doesn’t prove. It also sets the record straight on the “23 minutes to refocus” number that gets quoted everywhere. If you want the practical steps instead, jump to our guide on how to stop checking your business across 20 apps.
The research at a glance
| Study | Who and sample | Main finding | Main caveat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Harvard Business Review, 2022 | Murty, Dadlani and Das; 137 users in 20 teams at three Fortune 500 companies, 3,200 days of work | About 1,200 app and website toggles a day; just under 4 hours a week spent reorienting (about 9% of work time) | Mid- and back-office enterprise jobs; a magazine article, not a peer-reviewed paper; one author works on work-graph analysis at Soroco |
| Mark, Gonzalez and Harris, CHI 2005 | 24 information workers (managers, analysts, developers) observed for over 700 hours | About 11 minutes on a task before switching; 57% of tasks interrupted; interrupted work resumed on the same day 77% of the time, on average 25 minutes 26 seconds later | Small sample from two teams, published in 2005 |
| Mark, Gudith and Klocke, CHI 2008 | 48 participants in a lab email task, mostly German university students | Interrupted people finished faster with no loss of quality, but reported more stress, frustration, time pressure and effort | Lab setting; stress was self-reported after about 20 minutes of interrupted work |
| Leroy, 2009 | Two experiments, published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes | Leaving a task unfinished leaves “attention residue” that hurts performance on the next task | Lab experiments; describes the mechanism, doesn’t count hours lost |
| Microsoft Work Trend Index, 2025 | Anonymized Microsoft 365 signals ending February 15, 2025, plus a survey of 31,000 workers in 31 markets | Heavy users get a meeting, email or chat every 2 minutes during core hours; 48% of employees say their work feels chaotic and fragmented | Counts incoming pings, not app switches; the 2-minute figure is the top 20% of users by ping volume |
Links checked September 28, 2026.
The toggling study: 1,200 switches a day (HBR, 2022)
Rohan Narayana Murty, Sandeep Dadlani and Rajath B. Das studied 20 teams, 137 users in total, across three Fortune 500 companies for up to five weeks, a data set of 3,200 days of work (Harvard Business Review). Most worked mid- or back-office jobs in finance, HR, supply chain, recruiting and inventory management.
They measured how long it took people to get on with the next step of their task after switching apps. The answer: a little over two seconds per switch. That sounds harmless until you multiply it. The average user toggled nearly 1,200 times a day, which adds up to just under four hours a week, or about five working weeks a year, roughly 9% of annual work time. They also found that after 65% of switches, people toggled to yet another app less than 11 seconds later.
Caveat. This is an HBR article rather than a peer-reviewed paper, the people measured were enterprise office workers, and the data came from work-graph software; one of the authors is a research analyst at Soroco, which works on that kind of analysis. The two-second figure is also only the reorientation time the software could see. It says nothing about deeper loss of focus.
How often work gets fragmented (Mark, Gonzalez and Harris, 2005)
Gloria Mark’s group at UC Irvine shadowed 24 information workers (7 managers, 9 analysts and 8 developers) and timed their activities for over 700 hours (No Task Left Behind? Examining the Nature of Fragmented Work). People spent about 11 minutes on a unit of work before switching to another, and 57% of those units were interrupted.
Most interrupted work did come back: 77.2% was resumed on the same day. When it was, it took on average 25 minutes and 26 seconds, and people worked on about two other things in between.
Caveat. Twenty-four people is a small sample, and the observation predates smartphones and today’s team chat apps. The 25-minute figure is time until people went back to a task, not time needed to refocus once they did.
Interruptions make people faster and more stressed (Mark, Gudith and Klocke, 2008)
This is the paper most often cited for “the cost of interrupted work” (The Cost of Interrupted Work: More Speed and Stress). Forty-eight participants played an HR manager answering a full email inbox, and were interrupted by phone or instant message about every two minutes, either on the same topic or an unrelated one.
The surprise: interrupted people completed the task in less time, with no difference in quality. The price showed up elsewhere. After only 20 minutes of interrupted work, they reported significantly higher stress, frustration, workload, effort and time pressure. Whether the interruption was on-topic or off-topic made no difference.
Caveat. It is a lab study with mostly university students and short sessions. It shows the cost is stress, not lost output, over 20 minutes; it can’t say what happens across a whole working week.
Attention residue: why the last task follows you (Leroy, 2009)
Sophie Leroy’s paper “Why is it so hard to do my work? The challenge of attention residue when switching between work tasks” gave a name to something most owners feel (abstract on RePEc/IDEAS). Across two experiments, people who moved on while the first task was unfinished had trouble shifting their attention, and their performance on the next task suffered.
Finishing the first task wasn’t enough on its own. In her results, finishing under time pressure is what helped people disengage and do better on the next task.
Caveat. These are controlled experiments. They explain why switching hurts, but they don’t measure how many hours a real workweek loses.
The interruption load today (Microsoft Work Trend Index, 2025)
Microsoft’s special report “Breaking down the infinite workday” (June 17, 2025) looked at anonymized Microsoft 365 signals ending February 15, 2025 (Microsoft WorkLab). Employees were interrupted by a meeting, email or chat every two minutes during core work hours, 275 times a day. The average worker received 117 emails a day. In the accompanying survey of 31,000 knowledge workers in 31 markets, 48% of employees and 52% of leaders said their work feels chaotic and fragmented.
Caveat. These are incoming pings, not switches between apps. The two-minute and 275 figures come from the top 20% of users by ping volume, the 275 is counted over a 24-hour day, and the data excludes EU and education customers.
The “23 minutes to refocus” myth
You’ll often read that it takes 23 minutes to get back on track after an interruption, credited to Gloria Mark or to the 2008 UC Irvine study. That number does not appear in the 2008 paper, which measured speed and stress, not recovery time.
The closest published number from Mark’s group is the 25 minutes 26 seconds in the 2005 study above. It measures something different: how long before people returned to an interrupted task, with about two other activities in between. It is not how long it takes the brain to refocus. If you quote a recovery time, quote it with that meaning or not at all.
What the research means for a small business
None of these studies looked at small-business owners. They measured office workers inside large companies. But the pattern carries over. An owner’s switching is less about chat pings and more about checking: Stripe for money, the store for orders, analytics for traffic, the inbox for customers. Each of those checks is a switch, and each unfinished check leaves residue.
Two things follow from the research. First, the count matters more than any single switch, so the fix is fewer places to look, not faster tabs. Second, unfinished loops are what drag attention, so a check should end with an answer, not with “I’ll look again later”. Our guide on how to stop checking your business across 20 apps turns this into steps.
Vexlynk’s approach to the count is to put the sources you check as live cards on one board, so one look replaces a round of tabs. Most sources are read-only; a few (WhatsApp, Trello, ClickUp, Google Calendar) let you act from the card, only when you do it yourself — sending a message, or archiving, completing or deleting something, asks you to confirm first. The list of 23 live sources shows what you can connect.
Related guides
- Steps to stop checking your business across 20 apps
- The small-business tool stack, by job
- A single source of truth for your business numbers
- How to see your business numbers at a glance
Frequently asked questions
How much time does switching between apps cost?
In the 2022 HBR study of 137 enterprise workers, people toggled about 1,200 times a day and spent just under four hours a week reorienting, roughly 9% of their work time. That is the best direct measurement we found; it covers office jobs at large companies, not small businesses.
Does it really take 23 minutes to refocus after an interruption?
That figure isn’t in the 2008 UC Irvine paper it is usually credited to. The closest published number, 25 minutes 26 seconds from a 2005 study by the same group, is how long before people returned to an interrupted task, not how long it took to refocus.
What is attention residue?
It is Sophie Leroy’s term for the part of your attention that stays on a previous task after you switch. Her 2009 experiments found that leaving a task unfinished hurts performance on the next one.
Is context switching the same as multitasking?
They overlap. Multitasking usually means trying to do two things at once; context switching is moving from one task or tool to another. The studies above measure switching and interruptions, not simultaneous work.
How do I reduce app switching in my business?
Cut the number of places you check, and finish each check with a decision. Our guide on how to stop checking your business across 20 apps has the steps.
Vexlynk
Vexlynk Team