Personal knowledge base question-answering time saved

Benchmark range

Lower bound: 0.3 hours. Median value: 0.45 hours. Upper bound: 0.6 hours.

Measurement period: per working day.

Methodology

Triangulated from two independent lines of published evidence. Fragmentation: Harvard Business Review's instrumented study of 137 users across three Fortune 500 companies measured application toggling at roughly 9% of work time, just under four hours per week - about 48 minutes per working day, and the most rigorous figure available because it is observed rather than self-reported. Vendor self-report figures run far higher - Atlassian's State of Teams 2025 puts time spent searching for answers at 25% of working time and Coveo's EX Relevance Report at about three hours per day - and are treated as upper bounds, not measurements. Duplication: Asana reports 209 hours per knowledge worker per year on duplicative work, about four hours per week, and Panopto's survey of 1,001 US employees independently reports nearly six hours per week, so the duplication cost sits in a 4-6 hour per week band. Microsoft's 2023 Work Trend Index finding that 62% of people struggle with time spent searching establishes prevalence, not magnitude. CaseLedger publishes 0.3-0.6 hours - 18 to 36 minutes - per working day, roughly a third to three-quarters of the HBR-observed fragmentation cost alone, because a personal corpus addresses only the subset of questions whose answer is already in the buyer's own material, every answer is still read by a human, and no published source measures this skill.

Cited sources: 6. Measurement period: per working day.

Original sources

• Why work about work is bad for business

  Asana

  Asana reports the average knowledge worker spends 209 hours per year on duplicative work as part of the broader work-about-work burden.

• Coveo EX Relevance Report reveals 42% of information fails employees

  Coveo

  Coveo's EX Relevance Report says employees spend about three hours per day searching for information and that 42% of what they sift through is irrelevant to their role.

• How Much Time and Energy Do We Waste Toggling Between Applications?

  Harvard Business Review

  Harvard Business Review reports a study of 137 users across three Fortune 500 companies in which workers toggled between applications about 1,200 times a day, costing just under four hours a week or roughly 9% of work time.

• State of Teams 2025

  Atlassian

  Atlassian's State of Teams 2025 reports that leaders and teams spend about 25% of their time just searching for answers.

• Will AI Fix Work? - Work Trend Index Annual Report

  Microsoft Work Trend Index

  Microsoft's 2023 Work Trend Index reports employees spend 57% of work time communicating rather than creating, and 62% struggle with time spent searching for information during the workday.

• How Much Time Is Lost to Knowledge Sharing Inefficiencies at Work?

  Panopto

  In Panopto's survey of 1,001 US employees, workers reported spending nearly six hours per week duplicating work that someone else had already done or was already doing.