The Attention Tax
By John Millen
Every message you send has a cost.
Not for you.
For everyone else.
Sending is easy. Paying attention isn’t
It takes you 10 seconds to send a message.
But it rarely takes 10 seconds to receive and process your message.
Someone has to:
Stop what they’re doing
Read and interpret your message
Decide if it matters
Decide if they’re responsible
Shift back to what they were doing
That last step is the most expensive—and the most invisible.
Research suggests it can take more than 20 minutes to fully refocus after an interruption.
So that “quick message” isn’t just a quick message.
It’s a full reset.
The hidden cost: broken focus
Most meaningful work requires concentration.
Thinking. Writing. Planning. Solving.
That kind of work doesn’t happen in fragments.
It happens when someone can stay with something long enough to make progress.
But here’s the reality:
A study by McKinsey found that knowledge workers now spend close to 30% of their workweek on email alone.
Not the work.
The communication about the work.
We’re spending nearly a third of our workweek talking about the work instead of doing it.
And the more time people spend in email, the more their productivity drops—and their stress rises.
Not because they’re doing something wrong.
Because their attention is constantly being pulled away.
A quick example
A team member is working on a proposal that requires real thought.
Over the course of a morning, they get:
A few Slack messages
A couple of emails
A “quick question” from their manager
None of them are urgent.
All of them feel like they might be important.
So they respond.
By lunchtime, they’ve been busy all morning.
But the proposal hasn’t meaningfully moved.
When busy replaces productive
This is where the attention tax starts to show up.
People feel busy all day.
They’re responsive. Engaged. Active.
But at the end of the day, the important work is still sitting there.
So what happens?
They stay later. Or carry it into tomorrow.
I have many clients who tell me they’re so busy in meetings and responding to messages all day that they can’t get any real work done until after hours at night.
The data backs that up.
A significant portion of the workday—sometimes as much as half—is now consumed by low-value tasks like email, messaging, and coordination.
The morale problem
There’s a second cost, and it’s easier to miss.
When people can’t make progress on meaningful work, it’s frustrating.
When their day is controlled by incoming messages, it’s draining.
Over time, it creates a quiet shift:
Work feels reactive instead of intentional
People feel behind even when they’re working hard
Responsiveness gets rewarded more than results
It’s not surprising that nearly half of employees report feeling overwhelmed, and large majorities report burnout tied to this kind of work.
That’s not a motivation problem.
It’s an attention problem.
Then we ask the wrong question
This is where it connects back to what I wrote last week.
Leaders start to notice:
“Why isn’t anyone responding?”
Part of the answer may be:
Because everyone is managing a constant stream of messages just like yours.
When attention is stretched thin, something has to give.
Often, it’s the reply.
Better communication isn’t just clearer
It’s more intentional.
Before you send something, ask:
Does this need to be sent?
Do I need to copy everyone?
Does this need to be sent by me?
Does this need to be sent now?
And, most important, what does this interrupt?
The real shift
Great communicators don’t just make messages clearer.
They make fewer of them.
They understand that attention is a limited resource—and they treat it that way.
Because every message you send is small.
But the cost, over a day or a week or a team…
Isn’t small at all.
There’s a price to be paid by the recipient: the Attention Tax