Are You Guilty of “Context Switching?

What we often call “multitasking” is actually rapid context switching. Doing so can make us feel productive, but it is easy to cross a line into excess.  Too much switching slows you down and creates a “cognitive debt” that compounds throughout the day. We become less productive as we accumulate this debt.

Here is a list of indicators that you are guilty of excessive context switching.

1. Issues in your day-to-day work. Your work habits probably serve you well, but sometimes, they are detrimental. Here are the day-to-day work signals that you are letting too much context switching into your everyday activities:

• A failure to complete tasks. You have 10 open browser tabs, three draft emails, and a project charter that is 80% complete, yet you haven’t “closed the loop” on any of them by the end of the day.
• Quality slips. The grammar you use declines, you find typos in your project documents, or you start to forget things – like a critical stakeholder in your communication plan. If errors of that nature are normally uncommon in your work, it’s a signal that you need to slow down and focus.
• You experience “What was I saying?” moments. During meetings, you lose your train of thought or need to ask someone to repeat a question because you were occupied replying to an urgent text or letting your thoughts go to the dynamics of your next meeting.

2. Strategic thinking and decision-making erode. The ability to switch between the “big picture” and the day-to-day task management in your project shuts down. Here are signals that this is happening:

• The big picture escapes your thinking. Day-to-day issue management takes over your brain, and you discover that you haven’t looked at the long-term project roadmap or examined critical path status in over a week.
• You fall into analysis paralysis. When you need to make a complex decision, you feel overwhelmed because your brain is exhausted from the “switching cost” of jumping between different project contexts.
• Urgency usurps importance. You stop the essential tasks you are working on to answer the phone, even though you don’t know if the call is critical. Important tasks that require your full attention, such as re-evaluating your project risk profile or resolving a stakeholder conflict, keep getting pushed to “tomorrow.”

3. Your body starts sending you messages. The toll of context switching often shows up in your physiology before you notice it in your KPIs. Here’s what to look for:

• Daily fatigue. You feel physically exhausted at 5:00 PM, even though you spent the whole day sitting. This is likely the result of multiple cortisol (stress hormone) spikes from handling everything that feels like a “micro-emergency.”
• Just in case checking. You check your phone or email every few minutes, even when it hasn’t buzzed. This is a sign that you are feeding on adrenaline and have probably lost perspective.
• You are easily agitated. You become annoyed when team members approach you with a problem or question. In the worst scenario, you yell at them when they are trying to communicate with you. This often comes from any new information feeling like it will break your fragile mental juggling act.

The Unfortunate result – your project is impacted. If you see these trends in your reporting, multitasking is likely the culprit:

• Throughput stagnates. Your team’s “velocity” or task completion rate slows down because you have become a bottleneck, and are taking longer to give your approval, or you are requesting unnecessary reviews.
• Scope creep plagues the project. You are so busy managing the volume of tasks that you fail to notice small, unauthorized changes slipping into the project scope.

How bad can it be? Research shows that multitasking can reduce your productivity by up to 40%!* Watch for these symptoms and take action NOW! You’ll not only improve your results, but you’ll get more enjoyment out of your work.

Focus Strategies for Multi-Tasking Professionals: Proven Focus and Productivity Techniques for Remote Workers and Digital Nomads – Efficient Without Exhaustion. https://www.efficientwithoutexhaustion.com/articles/focus-strategies-multi-tasking-professionals/