Protect the hours that need your best thinking
OCT 5, 2026 — 4 min read
Most of us count the cost of routine work in hours. Ten minutes on a reply, twenty on a follow-up, half an hour on a status update. The real cost is harder to see: every small task is a reason to stop what you were doing.
The hours you lose are not the ones you track
A task that takes ten minutes rarely costs ten minutes. You have to switch to it, do it, and then find your way back to what you were thinking about. For work that needs concentration, such as a pricing decision, a hard customer conversation or a plan for next quarter, that way back can take much longer than the task itself.
“The cost of routine work is not the hour it takes. It is the hour it interrupts.”
Let someone else prepare, and keep the decision
Most routine work has the same shape. Something arrives, the details need gathering, a reply or an update needs drafting, and then someone decides to send it. Only the last step needs you. The rest can be prepared before you open your inbox.
That changes what an interruption looks like. Instead of starting from a blank page, you get a finished proposal with the reason attached, and a yes or a quick edit is all it takes. Batched together, a morning of small tasks becomes a few minutes of decisions.
A simple way to start
- 1.Write down the three tasks that interrupt you most often this week.
- 2.For each one, note what you actually decide and what is just preparation.
- 3.Hand over the preparation first, and keep the decision for yourself.
- 4.Look at your calendar and block the hours you get back, before something else fills them.
The point is not to do more. It is to protect the time for the work that only you can do, and to meet the rest at a time you choose.