How much do interruptions in the workplace cost us?

Office workers today are equipped with a lot of what I called ‘cyber tools’ such as internet, email, phone, PDA, IM and so on. We are bombarded with information, instant messages and emails which come and go through these tools every single day. Here come interruptions and distractions in the workplace. When we are interrupted, we have to stop current task, shift the intention, deal with the interruption and then get back to previous task. What do interruptions mean to business? They mean wasted time and money. Some amazing excerpts from news:

U.S. office workers get interrupted on the job as often as 11 times an hour, costing as much as $588 billion to U.S. business each year, according to research.

A typical manager is interrupted six times an hour, one recent study showed, while another found the average cubicle worker is interrupted more than 70 times a day.

A study by Basex found office distractions take up 2.1 hours of the average day -- 28 percent -- with workers taking an average of five minutes to recover from each interruption and return to their original tasks. Read more!