What Are Time Gaps Between Tasks and Why They’re Dangerous
Time gaps between tasks are hidden idle periods that occur when switching from one activity to another. Waiting for responses from colleagues, searching for files in messengers, re-approving due to unclear task descriptions — all of these consume working hours without being reflected in official reports.
According to McKinsey Global Institute, employees spend up to 20% of their working time searching for information and coordinating between tasks. These “invisible” hours are still paid for by the company — but produce no results. In a team of 50 people, that’s a loss of 2,000 hours per month, equivalent to the salary of an entire department.
The most dangerous aspect is that such losses accumulate quietly and remain untracked by traditional systems. Jira records time spent on tasks, but not the pauses between them.
Factor 1: Waiting for Approvals Consumes Up to 25% of a Team’s Budget
Managers often underestimate how much time teams lose waiting for decisions. An employee sends a request, switches to another task, then returns, re-enters the context — and the cycle repeats.
Real case: In an IT company with 40 developers, the average response time from tech leads was 3.2 hours. Over a month, that equaled 384 idle hours or ₴67,000 in salary losses. After implementing clear SLA response limits (maximum 2 hours), productivity increased by 18%.The worst part? These delays multiply — one blocked stage halts the next, creating a cascading effect across the entire project.
Factor 2: Context Switching Between Projects Destroys Focus
A University of California study found that after an interruption, it takes an average of 23 minutes to regain full concentration. When working on 4–5 projects simultaneously, effective productivity drops by 40%.
A developer switching between bug fixing and new feature development has to reload a new mental context each time. That time isn’t tracked — but it’s what eats away at deadlines. Companies pay for eight hours of work but get only four or five hours of real concentration.
This is especially critical in complex technical tasks, where loss of focus means having to re-analyze architecture or business logic from scratch.
Factor 3: Inefficient Communication Creates Process Chaos
Slack, Telegram, email, Jira, in-person meetings — modern teams communicate across 5–7 channels at once. Information gets scattered, decisions are lost, and employees spend hours searching for “where we discussed this.”
Typical situation: a technical decision is discussed in Slack, logged in Jira, but key details remain in a private chat. A week later, a new team member spends an entire day figuring out what actually needs to be done.
According to Yaware’s research, companies with chaotic communication lose up to 15% of working time on “sorting things out” and duplicating information. These are direct financial losses with zero added value.
Factor 4: Multitasking Destroys Both Quality and Speed
The illusion of multitasking costs companies dearly. The brain cannot process multiple complex tasks in parallel — it rapidly switches between them, losing efficiency at every transition.
An experiment in a Ukrainian IT company showed that when developers worked on a maximum of two tasks at a time instead of 5–6, project completion speed increased by 35%.
The paradox: fewer tasks = better results.
The main trap of multitasking is that it creates a false sense of busyness while productivity remains low. Employees stay busy all day, but results are minimal, deadlines slip, and stress levels rise.
Factor 5: Lack of Visibility Makes Time Losses Invisible to Management
Most analytics systems only track active task time. Time spent re-reading documentation, searching for past solutions, or waiting for access — all of this remains off the radar.
Managers see that a task took eight hours instead of four and assume poor performance. In reality, half of that time was lost to organizational delays that could easily be optimized.
How Yaware TimeTracker Solves This Problem
Yaware TimeTracker reveals the real-time distribution of work down to the minute. The system captures not only active work but also pauses, switches, and waiting time — the entire “invisible” layer that quietly eats up budgets.
Yaware automatically tracks all employee activities without disrupting their workflow. The time-tracking system integrates with Jira, Asana, Trello, and other tools to provide a complete picture — how much time is spent on tasks versus administrative downtime.
Managers receive detailed analytics for each employee and project, allowing them to identify where delays occur, which processes slow down the team most, and how to optimize working time for maximum efficiency.
Try Yaware TimeTracker for Free
Try Yaware TimeTracker free for 14 days and uncover how much hidden time loss your team actually has.
Registration takes just two minutes — start now and see how structured time tracking turns invisible downtime into measurable efficiency.
