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For 20+ years, I taught leaders how to run efficient organizations and teams.
Optimize meetings.
Streamline decisions.
Eliminate waste.
I thought I had efficiency mastered.
Until I realized how much of my own time I was wasting.
When I joined Amazon, my team of technologists and architects kept saying:
“We’re drowning in context switching.”
I shrugged it off.
I’d been doing that my whole career — juggling meetings, emails, and messages like a “badge of honor.”
Then COVID hit.
The workday became a blur of back-to-back calls, Slack pings, texts, and inbox chaos.
I thought I was coping.
I wasn’t.
While the pandemic has thankfully passed, its remnants of video calls and the above distractions remain!
🔍 Then I came across an HBR study (“How Much Time and Energy Do We Waste Toggling Between Applications?, Murty, Dadlani, and Das, Aug 2022) that changed everything.
In typical HBR fashion, the authors called it “toggle tax”—the cost you pay each time you shift contexts.
It showed that the average knowledge worker toggles between apps and windows 1,200 times a day — losing up to 4 hours per week just refocusing.
That’s five full weeks a year, gone!
So I changed my ways.
Here’s what worked 👇
🧠 1. Block time, ruthlessly.
Deep work deserves sacred space. I started reserving 60-minute focus blocks every morning — no meetings, no Slack, no email.
📵 2. Batch the reactive work.
I try and check email and messages 2–3 times a day instead of constantly grazing. If it’s urgent, people know how to find me. (Note: This is REAL hard for me; I am a work in progress).
⚙️ 3. Eliminate tool chaos.
I look to streamline systems and consolidate workflows so my teams aren’t bouncing between platforms.
The result?
My productivity doubled
My energy returned.
And for the first time in years, my calendar stopped managing me.
🔍 If you’ve ever felt stretched thin but can’t explain why— it might not be you.
It might be you paying the “toggle tax.”
⚡What’s one change you’ve made to protect your focus?
Want to chat with me about wasting 5 weeks a year and minimizing the “toggle tax.”? Schedule a video call here.