4 ms·

I've long known that excessive context switching dampens my productivity, but how else am I supposed to take my job seriously and give my side projects a shot?

• randomdata 15y ago
  I like the context switch. I can only work at one task for so long until the quality starts to decline. However, switching to a different job allows me to start fresh. It works really well for software development: I can do the programming for a while until I can program no more, at which point I can switch over to designing interfaces. The mix between creative and analytical thinking is highly beneficial to my workflow. When I focus on only one task, the quality of my work, at least from my point of view, is never as good.
• TeMPOraL 15y ago
  If you badly have to context-switch, make the process as efficient as you can. Context switches take a lot of time, but sometimes - like day job vs. side project - are unavoidable. So instead of trying hard to avoid all of the switches, maybe let's optimize the switching process so that it doesn't hurt so much? I started doing that at my last work - 10 minutes before leaving the office I would open up my "Context Dump" file and write down exactly what's on my mind - current project status, what I was working on, what have I done, what has to be fixed, what quirks are there, what ideas I was considering - pretty much a stream-of-consciousness-like mind dump to text file. And then, the next morning, first thing I would do would be to open up that file and re-read it. It helped me to rebuild my mind state in few minutes instead of an hour. Also, my anxiety went down, which reduced the amount of time I procrastinated on HN each morning.