3 ms·

A human 'context switch' seems to be equally expensive as for a computer.

• eeZah7Ux 8y ago
  Memory evolved (at least in mammals) to tie together places, smells and [proto]emotions. The connection is still quite present in humans. There are many examples: going for a walk clears your mind more than being indoors. Smells and flavors reconnect to places & so on...
• mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  And yet we design open-plan offices around the central theme that people working in a concentration-demanding field should orient their every moment of work around the assumption that not only are context switches costless, but that “collaboration” only happens if everyone is constantly preemptible according to the capricious judgment of managers and other colleagues who are not in a position to even judge the importance of the current task the person being interrupted is working on.
  • pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    >"[Y]et we design open-plan offices around the central theme [...]" Surely the theme is control and superiority. You go in the cube farm so that someone can control you and remain superior over you. I doubt people do it because they did time and motion studies and found it more conducive to your particular work?
    • mlthoughts2018 8y ago
      Sure, but then you are not paid for productivity, and we should speak plainly about this.
• mr__y 8y ago
  but at the same time it's significantly less reliable for humans - quite often some or all data from "registers" is lost during the context switch
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]