A developer is deep in a complex refactoring task. Slack notification: "Quick question about the auth flow." They answer it in 5 minutes. But it takes 23 minutes to get back to the same depth of focus on the original task.
That's not an exaggeration. Research from UC Irvine found it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to return to a task after an interruption. For complex cognitive work like programming, the cost is often higher.
The Daily Math
A typical developer day:
- 2-3 Slack interruptions from teammates asking about code context