As I write this article, I am toggling between seven browser tabs, ClickUp for tracking time, Slack for communication, and my mobile phone charging on a dock, visible in front of me. If that sounds like too many simultaneously open apps for a single task, we’ve not even begun yet.
“To execute a single supply-chain transaction, each person involved switched about 350 times between 22 different applications and unique websites,” wrote researchers in the Harvard Business Review [HBR].
In their study, an average user toggled between different apps and websites about 1200 times a day. All these distractions obviously come at a cost. In this blog post, we discuss the cost of switching between apps constantly [also known as toggle tax] and how you can avoid it.
How Much Time is Toggle Tax Costing Your Team?
Summarize this article for me pleaseWhat is Toggle Tax?
Toggle tax is the productivity loss you experience due to frequent task or app switching. The toggle element refers to context switching at work. And the tax element refers to the price you pay for:
- Physically switching between tabs, apps, or devices
- Additional load time for any of these tabs, apps, or devices
- Adjusting to the new app, its interface, and purpose
- Gathering the information or performing the action in the new app before moving on to the next in the workflow
- Distractions from apps that aren’t part of the workflow, such as a notification overload on a personal mobile phone
Toggle tax can impact organizational productivity in various ways.
Summarize this article for me pleaseWhat is the Impact of Toggle Tax on Productivity?
At first glance, using multiple apps/tabs seems obvious, even necessary. How would a writer write without research? How would a developer code without their toolkit? How would a customer service executive access all the information they need without accessing multiple apps?
While some movement between apps is inevitable, toggle tax can be exponentially high when excessive.
Stress and loss of focus: Excessive toggling causes the brain to produce cortisol, the stress hormone, which has a significant impact on work. It reduces focus, delays even the simplest of tasks, and affects the well-being of the employee.
Ineffectiveness: Switching between apps requires people to reorient themselves each time. The information retained in their short-term memory diminishes, losing out on context and making the overall process ineffective.
Inefficiency: The HBR study found that individuals lose just over two seconds every time they make a context switch. That means you spend up to four hours a week, and five working weeks a year, just reorienting yourself. This causes unnecessary delays and overall inefficiency.
Higher error rates: The constant shift in focus can lead to mistakes and oversight, which then adds to the cost of fixing them.
Lower quality of work: Context switching compromises focus time. Scattered attention means that office workers spend longer hours and cognitive effort to complete their work, not having the mind space to improve quality.
Stifling creativity: When someone has to move between dozens of apps for every process, they are driven by a checklist rather than their creative mind. Context switching leads to inordinate toggle tax by fragmenting attention, disrupting deep work, stifling creativity and innovation.
If you’ve ever Alt-Tab-ed your way to an app and wondered, “wait, what was I doing?” you’ve paid toggle tax. Someone earning $100,000 a year could be paying as much as $9,000 [up to five weeks’ wages] in toggle tax.
This might vary significantly across industries. Here’s how.
Summarize this article for me pleaseHow Toggle Tax Affects Different Industries
The overall impact we discussed above applies to all industries. Yet, some experience the toggle tax different from others. Here’s how.
Finance
Finance teams are responsible for complex calculations, reporting, projections, and compliance. For each task, they switch between software for ERP, financial planning, payroll, compliance, etc. in addition to project management, email, and innumerable spreadsheets.
The biggest toggle tax for employees in finance teams is errors and inaccuracies resulting from manually transferring data between systems. Missing a zero in a calculation can lead to inordinate compounding effects across!
Marketing
Marketing teams are known to use various apps for planning, creating content, designing creatives, publishing, distributing, monitoring, data analysis, project management, customer relationship management [CRM], and more.
Even though marketing is one of the most creative departments in an organization, they are infinitely distracted by their toolkit. This distraction affects creativity, building boredom within the organization.
Human resources
The HR team’s tool stack includes apps for recruitment, onboarding, employee management, benefits administration, performance management, etc. For example, a talent acquisition specialist processes a single candidate by switching between an Applicant Tracking System [ATS], email, interview scheduling tool, a document management system, Microsoft Teams, etc.
This fragmentation can slow recruitment and increase the risk of losing top talent due to delays.
Product
Product teams are known for their tech stack. Documents, roadmaps, goals, tasks, bug tracking, DevOps integrations, standup notes, feedback and retrospectives, demo presentations, time-billing software, so on and so forth. Nearly all of these business tools are necessary.
Without consolidation and integration of this tool stack, switching between them can unnecessarily extend cycle times, reduce quality, and prevent innovation.
Whether you’re a marketer, writer, programmer, customer service executive, or artist, toggle tax is unnecessary. While some context switching is unavoidable, here’s how you can minimize the time spent toggling with simple changes to your workflows.
Summarize this article for me pleaseHow to Reduce Toggle Tax
It’s important to remember that merely having multiple apps doesn’t lead to toggle tax. In modern knowledge work, a quiver of apps is necessary to get work done. In many cases, these apps accelerate tasks too.
Toggle tax happens when there is excessive switching between these apps in ways that are unnecessary and complicated. Here’s how to manage multiple projects and tasks at a time, while effortlessly avoiding toggle tax.
Rethink your workflows
Take time to think about your current workflows. For example, as a marketing team, think about all the tasks you do and how the work flows from one step to another.
Map the tools you’re using in the process. ClickUp Whiteboard offers a great collaborative space to draw existing workflows.
Identify duplicates and redundancies. For instance, you might be using Google Docs, Microsoft Word, and Notepad for creating content.
Design your ideal state. Use ClickUp Mind Maps to imagine what your most efficient process might look like. Or use ClickUp views to visualize your workflow in 15+ customizable ways.
Consolidate tools and information
For work to flow seamlessly, you need to consolidate information and enable access to everyone on the team. For instance, as an HR professional, if you have your applicant information on the ATS, the offer letter on Google Docs, and the negotiation conversation via email, the toggle tax you pay between these three is unnecessary.
Try to set up the entire workflow in one tool. ClickUp Forms help capture applicant information in one place. You can upload the offer letter as a PDF to their application task and manage the negotiation discussion in the comments. This helps handle the applicant lifecycle without toggling multiple apps.
Find ways to integrate your tools. Where you need to use various software, make information move in and out of your primary tool. ClickUp offers 1000+ integrations to become your single pane of glass for all workflows.
Build reporting capabilities. With these integrations, ClickUp Dashboard enables you to view all the reports you need in one place. See talent acquisition metrics, such as acceptance rates, response times, applicant experience, etc. Use this information to optimize workflows to prevent paying toggle tax.
Build an all-in-one workplace with search
Consolidating information enables access. But that alone isn’t enough. Imagine being in a software development team where you have to spend time looking for the acceptance criteria for the feature you’re programming.
To be effective, teams need to be able to find information without paying additional toggle tax. ClickUp’s universal search is designed to prevent exactly this.
- Quickly find any file, whether it’s in ClickUp, a connected app, or your local drive
- Add custom search commands like shortcuts to links, storing text for later, and more to search for anything all in one place
- Extend search to your favorite apps and search all in one place
- Search from just about anywhere, including the Command Center, Global Action Bar, or your desktop
Automate
Teams toggle between various apps for small tasks, like updating status or checking off a task, many of which can easily be automated. Automation streamlines workflows, handles repetitive tasks, and minimizes manual effort.
ClickUp Automations
With the 100+ ClickUp Automations, eliminate busywork, such as assigning tasks, posting comments, changing statuses, notifying delays etc.
For example, a customer’s information entered into the order management software can be automatically updated to ClickUp, allowing a single shared workflow and eliminating the need to manually enter the same data in multiple places.
ClickUp Brain
Put AI to work on your tasks to eliminate toggle tax. From summarizing meeting notes to getting you answers, ClickUp Brain can be your personal assistant for your unique needs.
Summarize this article for me pleaseSave on Toggle Tax With ClickUp
Most of the work in the digital world depends on data from various places. The value that this data provides is often an organization’s biggest differentiator. Yet, the price you pay for this—i.e. Toggle tax—can often be too much and no time management technique can prevent this.
ClickUp is here to help. With a large number of features, views, integrations, and an AI-powered universal search, ClickUp is built to be your all-in-one workspace.
Make your work efficient. Try ClickUp today for free!
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