Focus
Phone & Focus
Notification Cost Calculator
Notification Cost Calculator
Your phone pings dozens of times a day — but what's the real cost in lost focus hours? Enter your daily notification count and see the annual impact.
Results
Enter your daily notification count to see the true cost of interruptions.
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Frequently asked questions
- How is “true cost” calculated?
- Each notification costs about 30 seconds to notice and dismiss, plus an estimated 4.5 minutes to refocus — 5 minutes total per interruption.
- Is 5 minutes per notification realistic?
- UC Irvine research found ~23 minutes to fully resume deep work after some interruptions. We use 5 minutes as a conservative daily-life average. See UC Irvine interruption research for the original study.
- Where does the earnings figure come from?
- It's illustrative only: lost hours × $35/hr (rough US median). Multiply lost hours by your own rate for a personal estimate.