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About this tool
Log every distraction in a study session, find your top three triggers and estimate how much study time they cost you.
This log turns a tally of study-session distractions into three actionable numbers: your interruption rate per hour, your top three triggers ranked by frequency, and an estimate of time lost computed as distraction count times an adjustable per-event cost (3 minutes by default). It is for students who feel a session 'disappeared' and want to see, in numbers, exactly where the time went.
Open Distraction Log For Students on AltFTool — it loads instantly in your browser.
Add your input to the workspace.
Adjust the options until the result looks right.
Copy or download the output and put it to work.
Distractions per hour is comparable across sessions, unlike a vague feeling of a bad day.
The top three categories are sorted by count, each paired with one concrete countermeasure.
Estimated minutes lost — and effective study time remaining — are computed for every session.
Keep a tally sheet during one real session and mark a stroke each time focus breaks, sorted into categories like phone, people, noise and mind-wandering. Enter the tallies here and the top three triggers are ranked automatically — most students find one category accounts for the majority of events.
There is no official norm, but as a working rubric: under 2 interruptions per hour still allows 30-minute unbroken stretches suitable for deep work, while more than 12 means a break every 5 minutes and effectively no depth. This tool bands your rate on that scale.
More than the interruption itself, because you also pay a refocusing cost to re-enter the problem. This tool defaults to a conservative 3 minutes per event; interruption research, such as Gloria Mark's workplace studies, found full recovery from major task switches can take over 20 minutes, so adjust the figure to your experience.
Physical separation beats willpower: putting the phone in another room removes both notifications and the reflex check. Do Not Disturb plus out-of-sight placement typically eliminates the largest single distraction category students log.