Improvement Insights Blog
How Much Time is Friction Costing You?
My friend asked me how much time I waste every week dealing with hassles and friction of daily life. I said 8-16 hours. Here’s why:
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“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals” and QI Macros [software].
“My friend Eric and I were having lunch the other day, and he asked me, “How much time do you think you waste every week dealing with stuff that you shouldn’t have to deal with? I mean, things that other people have done that cause you to… the friction of daily life that causes you to update a phone or a computer or reboot it or whatever it is?” And I said, “Well, somewhere between 18 and 16 hours a week.” He said, “Really? I was thinking maybe seven.”
“I don’t know about you, you might want to take an inventory. How much time do you spend fixing stuff or dealing with stuff that’s caused by somebody else’s problem and their systems? Friction. This is a massive expense. And even things like… and a lot of these are interruptible. He said, “Well, sometimes my girlfriend comes in and interrupts me while I’m in the middle of doing something and then I have to respond to her and then I come back to it and I’ve forgotten where I was.”
“There was a Booz Allen Hamilton study years ago that found that any interruption can cost you another 30 minutes to reboot the task you were doing. If you were in a flow state, getting back into that state can take 30 minutes. So, it’s easy to lose 30 minutes on any interruption at all.
“So, that’s my Improvement Insight: Let’s start finding ways to remove the friction from everyone’s life, including our own. Don’t interrupt people if you don’t have to. Send them an email. If it’s just informational, you can send them an email if it’s just a question, but don’t interrupt people if you don’t have to.
“Let’s go out and improve something this week. Let’s get rid of that friction that’s causing all of us so much wasted time.”
