{"id":7868,"date":"2025-11-11T01:00:21","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T08:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/?p=7868"},"modified":"2026-02-18T14:34:52","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T21:34:52","slug":"how-much-time-is-friction-costing-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/how-much-time-is-friction-costing-you\/","title":{"rendered":"How Much Time is Friction Costing You?"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p>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&#8217;s why:<\/p>\r\n<p><em>Download my free ebook, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/pdf\/Agile-Process-Innovation.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Agile Process Innovation-Hacking Lean Six Sigma for Results<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/1102778889?title=0&amp;byline=0&amp;portrait=0\" width=\"720\" height=\"405\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>&#8220;Hi, I&#8217;m Jay Arthur, author of \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Lean-Six-Sigma-Hospitals-Improving\/dp\/1259641082\/\">Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals<\/a>\u201d and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/demo\/\">QI Macros [software]<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;My friend Eric and I were having lunch the other day, and he asked me, \u201cHow much time do you think you waste every week dealing with stuff that you shouldn&#8217;t have to deal with? I mean, things that other people have done that cause you to\u2026 the friction of daily life that causes you to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tiktok.com\/@lisapedace\/video\/7177468101557275950\">update a phone or a computer<\/a> or reboot it or whatever it is?&#8221; And I said, \u201cWell, somewhere between 18 and 16 hours a week.\u201d He said, \u201cReally? I was thinking maybe seven.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know about you, you might want to take an inventory. How much time do you spend fixing stuff or dealing with stuff that&#8217;s caused by somebody else&#8217;s problem and their systems? Friction. This is a massive expense. And even things like\u2026 and a lot of these are interruptible. He said, &#8220;Well, sometimes my girlfriend comes in and interrupts me while I&#8217;m in the middle of doing something and then I have to respond to her and then I come back to it and I&#8217;ve forgotten where I was.&#8221;<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;There was a Booz Allen Hamilton study years ago that found that <a href=\"https:\/\/lifehacker.com\/research-shows-how-much-a-three-second-distraction-can-5974976\">any interruption can cost you another 30 minutes<\/a> 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&#8217;s easy to lose 30 minutes on any interruption at all.<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;So, that&#8217;s my Improvement Insight: Let&#8217;s start finding ways to remove the friction from everyone&#8217;s life, including our own. Don&#8217;t interrupt people if you don&#8217;t have to. Send them an email. If it&#8217;s just informational, you can send them an email if it&#8217;s just a question, but don&#8217;t interrupt people if you don&#8217;t have to.<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;Let&#8217;s go out and improve something this week. Let&#8217;s get rid of that friction that&#8217;s causing all of us so much wasted time.&#8221;<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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&rsquo;s why: Download my free ebook, Agile Process Innovation-Hacking Lean Six Sigma for Results. &#65279; &ldquo;Hi, I&rsquo;m Jay Arthur, author of &ldquo;Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals&rdquo; and QI Macros [software]. &ldquo;My friend [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8180,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[290],"tags":[646,645,118],"class_list":["post-7868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-improvement-insights","tag-costs","tag-friction","tag-lean-six-sigma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7868"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8268,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7868\/revisions\/8268"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}