Cal Newport explains that context switching isn't equally harmful: switches to related work or emotionally charged tasks like email and Slack damage focus most, while checking sports scores barely registers. He recommends batching low-concentration work and protecting deep-work blocks, noting you need 10 to 15 minutes to recover after each switch.
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The question is with regard to context switching that you you said it's so important that we like that. That's probably the biggest thing to minimize in this day. And since you've done so much more research on that than I have, I want to know if you can think of any particular ways to quantify not just how many context switches you do, but how bad are they? Are they all equal? Are some of them more okay than others? And since I know you're a computer scientist, what would the formula be for context switching damage?
Yeah, it's a great question. And also I love the app you're working on, so I hope you finish that soon. By the way, an extra benefit of when we get to that age of these apps is that it also allows us to be much more mindful as organizations about how much is on each person's plate. Is it equitable? Is it Is the person who's a jerk getting less stuff because no one wants to talk to him than the person who's nice? Like a lot of that gets fixed when actually, wait, it's being assigned. Like these apps are telling people what to do, keeping track of things. To your question, yeah, the character flavor of the context shift really does matter. So there's certain things that can make a context shift worse. One is if you're shifting to a context that is related but not the same thing of what you're working on. Right? So this is why looking at work email when you're working on a work problem can create more problems than if you check in on the baseball score while you're working on work problems. Because the baseball networks are just so orthogonal, so different that it doesn't create quite the same mix up and cognitive catastrophe as okay, I'm looking at other projects, information about other projects while I'm working on this project that really creates more of a a mashup. The other issue, the thing that can make a context shift really bad is if there is social or emotional valency. So if you look at something, for example, that's very emotionally activating, that's going to be a more distracting context shift. So if you jump on Twitter and see something that's outraging or something like this, that is going to be more powerful than if you're looking at, again, baseball scores. I'm just thinking, what's boring with baseball scores? And then socially relevant is an issue. So one of the big, big problems with email in particular is that you are seeing requests from other people who need things from you. So your mind is going to put full stop screeching e, brake, skid out, turn when it thinks there's someone who needs someone from you. Because we take tribal connections very importantly, right? So it's like, oh, someone, it's someone I know who needs something from me. That gets a, that gets a ton of attention. Creates a large context shifting cost. So really the worst possible thing for a context shift happens to be the things that we most frequently context shift with, which is slack and work email. That's what makes those particularly bad. So if you're coding, let's say you're coding and you're really locked in, your brain's getting exhausted. To shift to a novel or to look at video game news or baseball scores or something just to give your brain a breather is going to be a lot better than if you say, let me check in on my work email or let me go on Twitter and see what's trending. It's a really good question because, like, not all context shifts are made equal.
Okay, well, I was hoping for some things that were a little more quantifiable digitally. Like I don't know how to measure the emotional impact of a, of a. But you know, that's all obviously personal on the person who's involved, which is what you're a big advocate of. But if there was as far as the actual like, number of contexts, which itself. Do you think there's like a, like a recovery period? Like it's better to have 10 context switches spread across 10 hours evenly or 10 all at once and then nine hours since you know, that's still an hour between. Yeah, yeah.
I think of like a 10 to 15 minute window as to refractory period here. So it can be less, right? It can be less, but typically you have to think it's gonna be 10 or 15 minutes before you get rolling again. So if it's a context shift every hour, you're reducing your high productive state output by 25%. I tend to be a fan of. Okay, if you have a bunch of little things that are all different from each other, but they don't require a ton of concentration to do. So this is like classically going through email. You're going to keep switching your context, but it doesn't take a ton of cognitive energy to answer emails. Batch that stuff. More so I tend to think there should be a block here and a block there where you're just let's go nuts with context. Should do a lot of things. Do 10 errands in a row, answer these emails, whatever. I'm going to be mentally exhausted. My brain's not going to be at full capacity, but it doesn't need to be to go to the pharmacy and answer this email, get that out of the way, and then go long periods without the context shifts. I think from an optimization standpoint, you'll probably better off with that formula.
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