It is a common knowledge that context switching is not most-effective way of working. It feels good to do many things at the same time – but this is an illusion, kind of dope. Dopamine, to be precise: our brain simply releases this hormone upon completing small steps of each task. This does not translate to the same level of productivity when we are focused on a single problem from start to finish, not to mention stress-related topics.
There are some techniques that helps with context switching – i.e. the Getting Things Done approach proposes some tools that help to recreate context quickly, when opportunity strikes, however this does not eliminate the root problem.
All this is quite clear when taking for example topics at work, switched at short time periods, but what about other examples?
For some time I had been working in multitasking mode at my home-office: check in, work, check out, some errands, check in, back to work and so on, up to ten times a day. Until recently, when I realized that this is the same multitasking mode.
The reason behind this observation was very simple – I had to work for a few days in single-work-block-per-day mode. What is the difference? Even with such a short sample I find disconnecting after work much easier – physically from the computer in the first place. I am unable to compare productivity yet, only my intuition tells me, that it will be better.
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