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> multitasking, skipped breaks and long hours From personal experience I think these are two very different things. Context switching seems to me to have a co
by ratherbefuddled 5y ago
> multitasking, skipped breaks and long hours
From personal experience I think these are two very different things.
Context switching seems to me to have a cost directly proportional to the complexity of the task. If it takes me 10 minutes to get the mental model of something sorted and then I'm interrupted I'll lose most of that 10 minutes. I can fire off emails requiring little thought one after the other with little cost.
I find that working long hours/without breaks is completely trainable. I can do it productively for long lengths of time and the longer I do it the easier it gets. It's very tiring, and requires solid rest in between but it can be done and it can be very productive.
The intersection of the two is impossible for me. Interruptions seem to accelerate the slowly building fatigue markedly. It's as though almost all the effort goes into getting the mental model sorted and staying there is relatively cheap.
- sokoloff 5y ago> I can fire off emails requiring little thought one after the other with little cost. So can everyone else, which results in the state of the average modern inbox.
- ratherbefuddled 5y agoYes, it's a sorry state of affairs. I'd escaped that sort of thing until recently when we started working with a client who behaves as though everybody lives in their inbox and sees emails seconds after they're sent. Explaining to them that I look maybe twice a day at emails was interesting. Slack is my problem. I'm trying to train myself to be disciplined but too many people treat it as synchronous.