Efficient Context Switching

Context switching refers to stopping doing what you're doing and switching to other activities or tasks.

Context switching has a cost. A case study from 2001 showed that office workers react to new emails within 6 seconds. Afterward, it takes them ~64 seconds to resume work on their previous tasks. These new emails cause 96 interruptions, which builds up to ~1.5 hours per day.

So, we should try to be as focus as possible if we want to get the work done.

But obviously, we have to context switch several times a day. To make this more efficient, here are some tips:

• Use Time Blocking
• Use Time Boxing
• Use reminders to switch
• Schedule tasks of the same type on the same day
• Implement A/B schedules (half week on this project, half other on another project, etc...)
• Make the tasks less cognitively demanding -> turn them into a process / make them automatic
• Pause work on tasks in the right place (don't stop in the middle of a task)
• Document everything to understand the relations between tasks

META

Status:: #wiki/notes/mature
Plantations:: Productivity
References:: @HowSwitchProjects