One of the most powerful shortcuts to greater work productivity is simple: avoid context switching.
Related to multitasking—the fool’s errand of attempting to do two (or more!) things at once—context switching is switching different work contexts: screen and paper, Outlook and Teams, Word and Excel, etc.
The problem with context switching? “Attention residue.” Every time you move between two contexts, you leave a little bit of your attention behind in that previous context. There’s only so much of your attention to go around.
There’s a wonderful simplicity here, a real “quick win” for those looking to feel more productive. The lessons practically write themselves: Focus on one thing at a time. Eliminate distractions. Change contexts only when you’re ready.
But a deeper truism lurks in the shadows: The simplest lessons are the hardest to learn.
Just now, for instance, I had to swat away the idea I really should check my email in favor of staying on this WordPress draft page.
Should I check my email? Not really. It’s another distraction, vying for my attention.
Writing is a great example of a task that rewards this disciplined approach, of avoiding context switching, of staying in the same mental playground, not being tempted elsewhere.
But this doesn’t apply to the lion’s share of work that I manage as an A/E/C marketer. Here’s an example—one that you may feel is unnecessarily detailed, but the detail felt important to convey my main point: context switching is an unavoidable aspect of my job. Below, I have bolded each context switch to give you some context for how, even in a 5-minute span, they can be impossible to escape.
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It starts simply enough: I need to place a project image into an InDesign document.
Our team uses OpenAsset, a wonderful cloud-based tool for managing images, so I navigate to my OpenAsset in my Firefox browser (1) to search for an appropriate image. I search for the project, but the images have not been uploaded. Dang.
I open Windows Explorer (2) and navigate through our marketing server. (I could have added an additional context switching moment if I hadn’t already been logged into our VPN.) I locate the project images. Yep, not uploaded to OpenAsset. Not yet, anyway!
I go back to OpenAsset in my Firefox browser (3) and create a new project. But I’m not sure what project number to assign if I want the OpenAsset project to connect to Deltek.
I open up Microsoft Edge (4), where I have set my homepage as the login page for our Deltek Vision project management system. (Deltek doesn’t play well with Firefox, my preferred browser.)
The Deltek Vision login window appears on my desktop and I log into Deltek Vision (5) to search the project by name and pick out the correct project number.
I return to OpenAsset in my Firefox browser (6) to enter in the number and proceed to uploading the project images.
I return to Windows Explorer (7) to drag over the project images into the upload pane.
I return to OpenAsset in my Firefox browser (6) to review the images and tag them with keywords.
I drag the image from OpenAsset over to InDesign (7).
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This context switching ballet plays out multiple times every day in the course of regular workflow. There are just too many different management tools and communication channels to avoid context switching and actually get my work done.
Deliberately, I picked an example without Outlook or Teams—programs that are landmines of distraction, bold unread emails and bold channels. If a task, such as locating a phone number for a project reference, involves digging through old email signatures, then I must gird myself against the distractions.
My point here is that while avoid context switching is great advice, it’s not always feasible for certain tasks. Sometimes, the very least I can do is be aware of what’s going on as I flit from program to program, conscious of the attention residue I leave behind with each new window.
Taylor Coe 