Context switching is the mind-killer
Context-switching is the little death that brings total obliteration
Before I begin, some context: Occasionally, I'll think of ideas in the shower or during a walk. For some ideas, I’ll do a quick Google search to find any existing literature. In this case I’ve found two things:
Elon Musk said the same thing a few years ago.
Google AI now provides a quick summary that gives a decent explanation.
The first one is a line, the second one provides an explanation, but it does not help you visualize the problem of context-switching. For that, I present a visuals-rich format for today’s post.
Enjoy!
When you pay focused attention to something, it might look like a contiguous block like the first one below. You might also call this Flow.
But I’ve found my attention increasingly looks more like the subsequent fractured ones, and I suspect it does for a lot of us as well.
Instead of focusing on one thing for a long amount of time, I’m switching from one context to another, from one piece of information to another, from longer formats to shorter ones.
The problem with doom-scrolling is you are rapidly switching contexts i.e rapidly switching between multiple threads of thought, most of which are new and not attached to a pre-existing ‘knowledge tree’.
The content we consume on social media is largely dictated by algorithms. Spending an hour on them means going through hundreds of ephemeral strands of new information, few of which might be useful to us later on.
Mindless perusal of unrelated knowledge adds no lasting roots, because there is no trunk to attach to.
An abundance of scattered knowledge does not translate to more effectiveness because
Every time you switch contexts, you pay a switching fee.
Your mind needs to not only drop the previous context, but also needs to get up to speed on the current task and the entire context surrounding that task.
This takes time and mental energy.
This is precisely why email can be such a pain.
You're dealing with tens or hundreds of different contexts one after another, each with a different background and each requiring a different solution.
Some people handle context switching much better than others E.g., Managers. The best example of the difference in operating styles between people was laid out by Paul Graham in his famous essay Maker's schedule, Managers schedule.
Makers like software engineers, writers or others involved in building and creating things, necessarily require long blocks of focused time to think and create.
Managers, however, are constantly shuffling between multiple contexts, ranging from dealing with employee problems to strategy to customer problems and more in the course of a single day. Their day is also peppered with multiple meetings.
How do you deal with context-switching?
Whether you like it or not, you're likely dealing with switching contexts multiple times a day, sometimes hundreds of times over the course of a few hours, like while watching Youtube Shorts.
One way to counteract the downsides of context-switching is to simply do fewer things.
Dieter Rams, the famous German industrial designer behind Braun’s design brilliance, who also inspired Johnny Ive and Apple products like the iPod, has a great line.
Less but better.
Maintain a high standard of excellence in all the things that you do, and only do those things where you can strive to hit that standard of excellence.
The fewer things you indulge in at the same time, the lesser your need for context switching.
The immediate benefit of doing fewer things but going deeper in each of them is you increase your expertise. Every new thing you learn about a particular task is akin to laying down new roots and adding branches to your existing knowledge tree, strengthening it.
Doing fewer things is fine, but work is always demanding and will require you to switch between a lot of different contexts. To avoid paying the switching attention fee, batching tasks together can be a very effective tweak to your workflow.
An example of how your schedule might look like is as follows
If you have three different concurrent projects, it might be useful to split your time across all of them by assigning one day of the week to each of them. Indeed that is how Elon Musk runs his multiple companies.
And within each day as well, you can batch certain tasks together.
All meetings can be held at the start of the day or the end of the day.
All email can be handled in one hour blocks maybe twice a day instead of breaking up the flow while you're working on something that requires uninterrupted.
Here are some more examples to spark ideas.
Use social media only when you have 5-10 minute blocks where you're waiting for the bus or at a doctors office or somewhere else (Long blocks of free time are too precious to squander on anything other than focused work or leisure)
Consider replacing social media with long form reading. I save all long-form reads on Omnivore and then read it when I have bits of time.
Consider books instead of social media or articles. I carry my Supernote everywhere and either read books or take notes during small blocks of time.
Manage your schedule in a way you have contiguous blocks of time for focussed work - e.g, Morning 6-8am for writing. Evening 8-10pm for coding etc.
The fundamental idea is still the same - find a way to reduce the amount of context switching that you need to do on a daily basis, and use the extra time and mental energy to work on the things that matter most to you.
There is no escaping context-switching but we can guard ourselves against its downsides by simply planning and structuring our work a little bit better.
Note: All drawings are hand-drawn by yours truly on the Supernote Nomad
This is so good! I appreciate you expounding upon a solution richer than “do less things”.
Working for a tech start up, that is simply not an option. I’m going to look at time blocking based on focus so the drag of context switching is less!