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For me, it's when I am consciously paying attention to more than one thing either "at the same time" (watching YouTube while cooking) or in rapid succession (ru

by twh270 5y ago

For me, it's when I am consciously paying attention to more than one thing either "at the same time" (watching YouTube while cooking) or in rapid succession (run unit tests in the IDE, check email, look at story in JIRA, look at the weather on my phone, go back to the IDE to fix a failing test, ...). I was in this mode for years, racing around on overdrive, and I've been slowly learning to do One. Thing. At. A. Time. again. It's been hard because the habit is so ingrained. And probably also because it 'feels' like I'm less productive.

mastercoder82 5y ago
Paying attention to more than one thing "at the same time" - is not humanly possible. So when you are simultaneously doing two tasks that demand attention, what you are actually doing is rapid context switching. The thing to understand is that - “attention has inertia”. Context switching has two implications: 1. It drains your energy - You have limited energy available every day. If you spend most of your energy in context switching, very less is available for actual work. And if you over-work, you cause real physical damage to yourself. 2. You can’t do any deep work - Deep work requires attention on a single thing for a sustained period of time. The idea is to work with your attention - not against it. The best way to do that is to reduce context switching and eliminate attention residue. Here is how: 1. Short-duration tasks - When you pick a task, finish it completely before moving on to the next one. Have distraction-free slots for work and batch similar tasks together. 2. Long-duration tasks - Pause-and-resume approach. When you pause a task, take a mental dump of its current state. This helps in two ways - first, your attention will not linger when you move to the next task and second, it will be easier to pick up when you resume that task.

by twh270 5y ago

mastercoder82 5y ago

Paying attention to more than one thing "at the same time" - is not humanly possible. So when you are simultaneously doing two tasks that demand attention, what you are actually doing is rapid context switching. The thing to understand is that - “attention has inertia”. Context switching has two implications: 1. It drains your energy - You have limited energy available every day. If you spend most of your energy in context switching, very less is available for actual work. And if you over-work, you cause real physical damage to yourself. 2. You can’t do any deep work - Deep work requires attention on a single thing for a sustained period of time. The idea is to work with your attention - not against it. The best way to do that is to reduce context switching and eliminate attention residue. Here is how: 1. Short-duration tasks - When you pick a task, finish it completely before moving on to the next one. Have distraction-free slots for work and batch similar tasks together. 2. Long-duration tasks - Pause-and-resume approach. When you pause a task, take a mental dump of its current state. This helps in two ways - first, your attention will not linger when you move to the next task and second, it will be easier to pick up when you resume that task.