You grab your phone to check the time. Within minutes, you’re watching someone’s 5 a.m. morning routine, skimming breaking news, and scrolling past posts from people you barely know. Half an hour has gone by. Work still hasn’t started.
That pattern is not accidental.
“I used to hack attention at Google. I was good at it,” Kenneth Schlenker said.
In his early twenties, Schlenker analyzed engagement patterns across YouTube and Google Search. Every swipe was designed to trigger dopamine. Every alert signaled a reward. Every algorithm was optimized to keep users engaged as long as possible. None of it was accidental. It was built into the system.
Today, the financial consequences are showing up inside American workplaces. U.S. businesses lose as much as $1 trillion a year because employees cannot stay focused, according to multiple productivity studies. Workers check their phones about 150 times a day. The average employee spends 2 hours and 6 minutes on non-work screen activity during the workday. Research shows it can take up to 23 minutes to return to a task after a single interruption.
Even senior leadership teams are feeling the impact. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon recently banned phones from executive meetings after watching participants scroll through presentations. California has moved to require warning labels on social media platforms. The U.S. Surgeon General, supported by 42 state attorneys general, has called for tobacco-style warnings on apps that “systematically undermine users’ ability to control their own time and attention.”
The core issue is not self-discipline. Experts say it is the result of systems engineered to override it.
The Cost of Continuous Distraction
Economist Impact and Dropbox analyzed the financial impact of “continuous partial attention,” a state where workers are constantly splitting their focus. The study found that 66% of U.S. employees use personal devices for non-work activities multiple times a day, totaling about five hours per week.
The cost: $650 billion to $1 trillion in annual productivity losses in the United States alone. France estimates a national productivity loss equal to 2.9% of GDP. Globally, employee disengagement tied to distraction and burnout costs an estimated $8.8 trillion.
Debates over remote, hybrid, and in-office work often overlook this underlying issue. Employees are not necessarily overwhelmed by where they work. They are overwhelmed by the constant mental effort required to ignore notifications and stay focused. Companies can mandate attendance, but they cannot mandate attention in an environment optimized for interruption.
A Founder Who Saw the Shift Early
Schlenker anticipated this long before it became mainstream. In 2008, while still at Google, he drafted the business plan for a focus app after observing how deeply engineered compulsion loops had become. It took 11 years to build the solution. The result was Opal, which now has more than 10 million users.
Opal is part of a larger shift. More than 100 million people downloaded focus or digital wellbeing apps in the past year. The growth signals a broad recognition that willpower alone cannot compete with products deliberately designed to be irresistible.
Opal blocks apps and websites that disrupt concentration, including social media, news sites, and gaming platforms. Users set timed focus sessions that lock out distractions until the block is complete. The platform also tracks “deep work” time, giving individuals and companies a clear view of how many uninterrupted hours employees actually achieve.
The app uses gamification — awarding points and “gems” for meeting focus goals — mirroring the dopamine-based systems found in the apps it blocks, but directing them toward productivity instead of distraction. For organizations using Opal across teams, the data often reveals how much work time is lost each day.
Students represent 70% of Opal’s users. Many report that unplanned screen time hurts academic performance and longer-term goals. Early adoption among young people signals that future workers will expect employers to support environments that make focus possible.
Why Employers Should Pay Attention
Attention management is emerging as a workplace priority and a competitive advantage. Companies that help employees regain control of their time may see gains in performance, retention, and overall well-being.
Regulators are beginning to respond as well. Warning labels on social platforms are expanding, and legal liability for design practices that harm user attention could follow. More than 100 million people have already taken steps to curb digital distraction, and experts say companies that adapt early may avoid future compliance challenges.
Steps Leaders Can Take Now
Organizations can address the problem by:
• Creating work environments that reduce unnecessary digital interruptions
• Adopting tools that measure and encourage focused work
• Establishing clear norms around uninterrupted time
• Treating attention management as a workplace standard, similar to safety or ergonomics
Research already identifies which apps cause the most distraction, when focus declines during the day, and what practices help employees maintain productivity. Companies that ignore these indicators risk losing top talent to workplaces that prioritize focus.
Interest in a four-day workweek continues to grow, but analysts note that shorter schedules are unlikely to succeed without solving the foundational problem of distraction. Without improving focus, compressing the workweek simply compresses stress.
Younger workers are already demanding change. Many adopt focus tools long before entering the workforce and seek environments that support sustained attention. As this generation advances, companies built around maximizing engagement may find themselves competing with organizations built around maximizing focus.
The question for leaders is not whether this shift is happening. It is whether they will adjust early, or after their best employees already have.