Increase Productivity By Minimizing Context Switching

How to prevent context-switching derailing your productivity.

Context-switching occurs when we shift attention between different tasks, projects, or thought processes. This constant shifting between tasks disrupts focus and workflow, significantly impacting productivity.

Multi-tasking, a productivity hack that has been thoroughly debunked, is essentially our brain switching very rapidly between tasks that we think we’re doing simultaneously. While most of us know that multi-tasking doesn’t work, we still context-switch and think we’re being productive. However, research shows that we could be losing up to 40% of our productivity when we do so (https://www.apa.org/topics/research/multitasking).

Research also shows that remote and hybrid work cause us to context-switch more than ever, due to both the additional distractions of working at home (like ringing doorbells, noisy pets, and interrupting children) and the increase in digital interruptions like instant messages and video calls. Since we can’t change the modern workplace, what can we do to be more effective in this environment?