INTERRUPTION RECOVERY COST
The interruption took a minute. Getting back took longer.
01 DEFINITION
Condition in which the cost of an interruption is not the time it occupied but the time and accuracy of returning to what it displaced, and nothing about the interruption reports that second cost.
02 CONDITIONS
UNCERTAINTY
UNRECORDED
Where the person was is not held by anything except the person.
TIME PRESSURE
SHORT
The return happens immediately and is where the accuracy is lost.
ERROR ASYMMETRY
DEFERRED
A mis-resumption costs nothing at the moment of resuming.
OPERATOR STATE
DEDICATED
The person is deep in something, which is what makes the return expensive.
03 WHERE IT APPEARS
MEDICALA clinician returns to a task and has to re-establish where in it they were.
ENERGYAn operator resumes a sequence and the resuming is where the risk of the interruption lies.
MANUFACTURINGAn operator returns to a setup and rebuilds their place in it from what is on the bench.
PUBLIC SERVICEA caseworker returns to a case and re-reads to find where they had got to.
FINANCEAn analyst resumes a reconciliation and the resumption is where errors enter it.
EDUCATIONA learner returns to a task and spends more recovering their place than they were away.
04 WHERE THIS IS SURFACING
This surfaces wherever work is deep and interruptions are ordinary. The interruption is measured and the return is not, so the accounting only ever sees half of what it cost.
The question it keeps returning to is what a surface holds for a person who has been away from it — keeping their position risks resuming into a situation that has moved, and keeping nothing means rebuilding it from memory.