#context switching

autism spectrum has 2 aspects, the social interaction part and the repetitive/narrow focus part.

part 1 is a spectrum going from Being able to intuitively navigate social situations with great ease to Seeing human as just another object in the room.

part 2 goes from Being able to easily switch between different contexts of actions and thoughts to Being unable to change context without external influence.

i haven’t read enough on adhd so for now i will think of it as having 2 parts based on what i remember of the main types of symptoms, the inattention part and the impulsiveness part.

the inattention part has quite some overlap with the context switching in the autism spectrum that i can’t help feeling it might be one single large spectrum at play here, going from constantly switching context (out of control) to absolutely cannot switch at all (out of control). the neurotypical range (some control) would fall in the middle of this spectrum.

part 1 of the adhd spectrum goes from Being able to easily direct and maintain attention on an activity or topic to Having no conscious control over attention and mental focus.

part 2 goes from Being able to consciously control actions and thoughts with ease to Doing whatever the unconscious brain picks up and suggests.

It is a very rare situation for a developer to work on more than one project at once and never more than two. The only situation I have ever seen a developer work on more than one project at once (engineer, artist, or designer) is when they are extremely experienced and are only "consulting" for one of the two projects they are responsible for. When I say "consulting", I mean they serve as a knowledge repository to answer questions from other team members and are only assigned the most critical tasks in an emergency.

The reason for this is because there is a huge amount of context involved with working on a game project. Different games have different underlying systems and rules. This project's underlying combat systems interact with stats, gear, quest variables, animations, art assets, naming schemes, coding standards, themes, visual style, etc. can be very different from that project's combat systems, stats, gear, quest variables, animations, art assets, naming schemes, coding standards, themes, visual style, etc. for a variety of reasons. Much of the time, this is because the people who built these systems did so in order to meet the specific needs of this project while the other team builds their systems in an equally valid but different way to meet a different set of needs for a different project.

In order to be productive, I need to keep all of these different rules, tools, systems, work flows, etc. straight in my head while I'm working. Whenever I have to switch projects, it takes time to remember where everything is and re-familiarize myself with the rules. It’s a lot like speaking a completely different language - it isn’t just the words themselves that I have to change, but the grammar rules, the idioms and expressions, the pronunciation, and so on. This is a mental cost called "context switching", and it becomes more and more expensive depending on how much contextual knowledge I need to remember as well as how long it's been since I've had to think about it. This context switching time cost generally means that we don't switch projects often at all - when we are assigned to a game, we're on that game full-time until we finish.

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You can plan the perfect day, brew the perfect coffee, and still watch your attention dissolve. The culprit often isn’t laziness or weak willpower—it’s the number of context switches you rack up each hour. Every time you jump from one activity to another—even for a few seconds—your brain pays a toll. Multiply that toll across messages, tabs, apps, errands, and micro-distractions, and you get the strange feeling of working all day with little to show for it.

This article makes a simple case: track your context switches per hour for a week. Once you can see the number, you can lower it. When you lower it, your energy, clarity, and output rise—without extra hours or caffeine.

What is a context switch?

A context is the mental setup required to do a task: the rules, goals, memories, and cues that make it run. A context switch is any transition that forces your brain to reload that setup. Obvious switches are moving from reading to messaging or from writing to browsing. Sneaky switches are peeking at a notification, toggling a tab to “quickly check something,” or letting a thought spiral pull you into a different task.

Two details matter:

Switching carries a reload cost. Your brain needs a moment (or several) to reconstruct where you were and what mattered.

Partial switches also cost you. Even a glance at something unrelated fragments the previous context and dulls momentum.

You don’t feel each cost in the moment. You feel the cumulative drag—fuzzier thinking, more mistakes, and that hollow “busy but not done” fatigue.

Why this metric deserves a place on your dashboard

There are countless productivity tips. Most are optional. Context switches per hour (CS/H) is different because it captures something fundamental about how attention works:

It’s objective. You can count it. If you switched 18 times between 10:00 and 11:00, that happened.

It’s actionable. Fewer switches mean longer stretches of clean attention, which almost always improves quality and speed.

It’s root-cause level. Task overwhelm, procrastination, and overwork often trace back to frantic switching rather than the tasks themselves.

Think of CS/H as the friction index of your day. Lower friction, go further with less fuel.

How to measure your switches (without turning life into a lab)

You don’t need fancy tools. Start simple, get a baseline, and keep the habit lightweight.

Step 1: Define “a switch.” Count any change of activity or attention that isn’t a planned micro-break. Examples: app changes, tab changes, picking up your phone, responding to a new message, shifting from reading to writing mid-block, jumping from chores to TV and back.

Step 2: Pick a tracking window. Two to four hours a day is enough—ideally one morning block and one afternoon or evening block. If you prefer a full-day view, great; just don’t burn out on tracking.

Step 3: Tally. Use a sticky note, a tiny counter app, or a single tally line in a notebook. Each switch = one mark. If a tool can auto-log app/tabs for you, fine—but manual tallies build awareness quickly.

Step 4: Note the context. Add a short tag beside each tally: phone, tab, message, thought, person, errand. Patterns emerge fast.

Step 5: Summarize. At the end of the window, compute switches ÷ hours. That’s your CS/H. Do this for 5–7 days to get a feel for your normal range.

You’ll likely discover “hot zones” (times or activities where switches explode) and “cool zones” (naturally steady attention). That’s your map.

What’s a “good” number?

There’s no universal gold standard, but you can use these practical ranges to orient:

0–4 CS/H: Deep or steady attention. Work feels smooth; you re-enter tasks easily.

5–9 CS/H: Moderate friction. Functional, but you’ll notice more reloading and fatigue.

10+ CS/H: High fragmentation. Expect shallow progress, more errors, and end-of-day depletion.

Don’t judge—compare you to you. If you’re averaging 12, getting to 7 is a huge win. If you’re at 6, moving to 4 can feel like night and day.

Why switching feels irresistible (and how to disarm it)

Context switching is seductive because it offers micro-rewards: novelty, relief from difficulty, quick hits of completion. Under stress, the brain grabs the nearest “easy reward” (check, scroll, peek), even when it hurts long-term goals. Three common triggers fuel the loop:

Unclear next step. Ambiguity invites escape.

Frustration or boredom. Discomfort drives you toward quick relief.

Unmanaged cues. Notifications, open tabs, visible apps, and nearby tasks constantly whisper “over here!”

The antidote isn’t iron will. It’s design: make the desired path easy and the noisy paths slightly harder.

A humane plan to lower your CS/H (and keep it low)

Think of this as a series of small levers. Pull two or three at a time; measure again next week.

1) Decide once per block

Before you start, write a one-line intention: “From 10:00–10:50, I’m drafting the intro.” Decide where you’ll put anything off-topic (a quick capture list) and how you’ll handle intrusions (ignore, batch, or reschedule). Now you’re not re-deciding every five minutes.

2) Shrink the step in front of you

If you feel the itch to switch, it’s often because the step is too big or vague. Reduce it to something you can do in under two minutes: “Write a messy opening paragraph,” “Sort five photos,” “Wash the cutting board.” Tiny steps re-engage momentum and make switching less attractive.

3) Make “capture” effortless

Off-track ideas and errands are good—just not now. Keep a single place to dump them in seconds (a small notepad, a text file, or a simple list). Promise yourself you’ll review later. Your brain relaxes because nothing is lost, and you avoid a context change.

4) Set hard limits on cues

Silence non-essential notifications. Put your phone out of reach or in another room for the block. Close unrelated apps and tabs. If you need reference tabs, park them in a separate window so your main workspace stays clean.

5) Use “edges” that calm the nervous system

Start blocks with 60–90 seconds of long-exhale breathing or a brief look at a distant object (relaxes near-focus fatigue). End blocks with a quick note: “What I did / What’s next.” These edges reduce the urge to wander at both start and finish.

6) Batch similar tasks

Group errands, messages, and low-effort chores. Batching turns many tiny switches into one deliberate session. You keep a single mental context online instead of rebooting it all day.

7) Protect a daily “focus window”

Even 50–90 minutes of protected attention changes the feel of a day. Choose the time you naturally think best and defend it. Everything else can orbit around that island of clarity.

8) Recover strategically when you do switch

A switch will happen. When it does, close the loop: return and re-read the last few lines you wrote, or restate your next tiny step aloud. You shorten the reload and signal your brain: we’re back here now.

Real-life settings (beyond a desk) where CS/H matters

Cooking and home projects. Each interruption means re-orienting to steps, timing, and safety. Fewer switches = fewer errors and less stress.

Studying and hobbies. Skill growth depends on sustained practice. Counting switches helps you learn when and why you drift so you can shape the environment.

Family routines. Even everyday transitions—prepping for school, tidying, bedtime—run smoother when you minimize competing inputs during the window.

The principle is the same everywhere: reduce simultaneous demands on attention, and quality rises.

Your 7-day experiment

Make it simple, honest, and kind.

Days 1–2: Baseline. Track CS/H in two daily windows. Don’t change anything. Just notice triggers, times, and contexts.

Days 3–5: One lever at a time. Pick a single lever (e.g., phone out of room; one-line intention; close extra tabs). Track again. If you want to add a second lever, do it on Day 5.

Days 6–7: Batch and protect. Add one batching session (messages, errands, admin) and one protected focus window. Track CS/H and how you feel at the end of each day.

End of week: Review. What lever gave the biggest drop? When did switches spike? Choose the two practices you’ll keep next week. Your goal is a repeatable rhythm, not a perfect number.

Troubleshooting common roadblocks

“My life requires responsiveness.” Great—be explicit about which hours are responsive and which are protected. In responsive hours, focus on lowering pointless switches (e.g., duplicate notifications, bouncing between apps that can be queued).

“I check my phone without noticing.” Increase distance and friction. Put it in another room. If it must stay nearby, use grayscale mode and remove the most tempting icons from the first screen.

“I get bored.” Alternate task difficulty. After 40–50 minutes of heavy lift, insert a short, intentional light task or a micro-break that genuinely refreshes (movement, breath, fresh air), not a doom-scroll that explodes your CS/H.

“Other people interrupt me.” Use visible signals (door position, headphones, a note) and pre-agree on check-in times. Most people respect boundaries they understand.

“Tracking itself distracts me.” Make it tiny: one tally per switch, nothing more. Or do a post-block estimate (“about eight switches”)—imperfect data is still enough to improve.

The unexpected benefits of fewer switches

Lower CS/H doesn’t just improve output. It changes how the day feels. You’ll notice cleaner memory of what you did, smoother mood, and more energy left for life outside your tasks. Decision fatigue drops because you’re not constantly choosing “what now?” The compound effect is real: a few more deep blocks each week translate into projects finishing sooner and routines feeling calmer.

A gentle target to keep

Aim to shave 2–4 switches per hour from your current average over the next month. That’s all. Tiny drops add up. Each avoided switch preserves a little clarity. Enough of those preserved moments become a different kind of day.

Conclusion

If attention is your most valuable resource, context switches are the leaks in the tank. Measure them, reduce them kindly, and you’ll reclaim hours you thought were gone. You don’t need a new personality—just a few small guardrails and a weekly look at the number that tells the truth about your focus.

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Ever feel like your day is chopped into chaotic fragments—replying to emails, hopping into meetings, switching to design work, then back to admin? Each mental shift carries a hidden cost. Studies show that when you switch between dissimilar tasks, your brain incurs a “switch cost” of up to 40% in lost productivity—what psychologists call attention residue. The antidote? Batching: grouping similar tasks together to ride deep-focus waves and supercharge your flow state.

In this guide, you’ll discover:

The science of attention residue and cognitive switch costs

Real-world examples of batching in action

Strategies to implement batching in your calendar and task lists

How to combine batching with time blocking for sustained focus

Let’s unlock the productivity gains of batching and reclaim your brain’s full bandwidth.

The Cognitive Science of Task Switching

Attention Residue Researchers Sophie Leroy and David Meyer demonstrated that after switching tasks, part of your attention remains stuck on the previous task. This residue slows you down on the new task until you fully mentally detach. The more frequent the switches, the greater the residue and the lower your overall output.

Switch Costs and Mental Overhead Every time you toggle from writing to emailing, your brain must:

Suspend the current mental context

Retrieve the new task’s context

Reorient yourself—recalling where you left off

Even a 3–5 second interruption can add up to minutes of lost focus. Frequent context shifts multiply these delays.

Flow State Disruption Flow—a state of deep immersion and peak performance—requires consistent challenge-skill balance and minimal interruptions. Batching similar tasks creates the extended, predictable conditions necessary to enter and sustain flow.

Why Batching Works: Evidence and Examples

The Email Sprint A study at UC Irvine found professionals check email an average of every 6 minutes, but most responses could wait 30–60 minutes. Teams that limited email checks to three fixed times per day reported a 50% reduction in perceived workload.

Focused Writing Blocks Authors and knowledge workers who allocate a two-hour block exclusively to deep writing produce 2–3× more content than those who write in fragmented 15–30 minute slots.

Sales Call Clusters Sales teams see the highest conversion rates when they group similar outreach calls into morning and afternoon “call blasts,” rather than interspersing calls with administrative work.

Steps to Batch Your Workday

Audit Your Task Types Spend one day logging each type of work you do. Categorize tasks into groups such as Creative (writing, design), Administrative (emails, invoicing), Collaborative (meetings, calls), and Repetitive (data entry, filing).

Create Logical Batches For each category, define one or two daily batch windows, for example:

Morning (9–10 AM): Creative deep work

Late Morning (11 AM–12 PM): Email and messaging

Early Afternoon (1–2 PM): Administrative tasks

Mid-Afternoon (3–4 PM): Meetings and calls

Late Afternoon (4–5 PM): Repetitive routines

Time Block and Protect Block these windows in your calendar and treat them as non-negotiable appointments. Use “focus mode” settings on your devices to silence notifications during deep-work batches.

Use Task Lists Aligned to Your Batches Structure your to-do lists around batch categories. In Mevolve, create separate Smart Lists or tags—#Creative, #Admin, #Collab, #Repetitive—so you only see relevant items during each batch.

Review and Refine Weekly At week’s end, assess how well your batches aligned with energy levels and deliverables. Adjust batch durations or reorder categories based on real performance data.

Advanced Batching Techniques

Themed Days Dedicate entire days to one category (e.g., “Writing Wednesdays” or “Finance Fridays”) for deep expertise and accelerated progress.

Micro-Batching Within larger batches, break tasks into 5–15 minute sprints separated by brief breaks to maintain momentum and prevent fatigue.

Contextual Batching Group tasks by location or tool:

@Office: Tasks needing desktop apps

@Phone: Voicemails, SMS outreach

@Home: Planning, reading, low-energy routines

Batch Social Interactions Cluster networking—coffee chats, LinkedIn outreach, community engagement—into one weekly slot to avoid constant context switching.

Batching Pitfalls to Avoid

Overly Long Batches Blocks longer than 2–3 hours can lead to diminishing returns. Balance depth with rest.

Unrealistic Task Allocation Stocking batches with more work than you can do breeds frustration. Track average throughput and scale batches accordingly.

Ignoring Energy Rhythms Align batch types with your natural peaks and troughs. Schedule demanding creative work when your energy is highest.

Breaking Batches with Meetings If leadership demands interrupt your protected batches, negotiate dedicated time slots and push for meeting-free zones.

Measuring Batch Success

Task Completion Rate: Compare tasks finished per batch versus fragmented work.

Perceived Focus: Log subjective focus scores (1–5) before and after batching.

Time to Resume: Measure how quickly you return to peak productivity after interruptions.

Stress Levels: Track stress or cognitive load via quick mood check-ins; batching should correlate with lower stress.

Conclusion

In a world of endless interruptions, batching offers a simple yet powerful antidote. By grouping similar tasks into dedicated time blocks, you minimize attention residue, enter flow more readily, and reclaim your brain’s capacity for meaningful work. From emails and administrative chores to writing sprints and collaborative meetings, batching transforms chaotic multitasking into a finely tuned, high-output rhythm.

How to Use Weekflow to Improve Your Batch Processing

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The Power and Drawbacks of Context Switching | VisualSP

Context Switching is when we switch our context, our mindset, to doing something else... switching from one activity to the other.

How to be productive in the swirl of startup chaos

Now that I have been back on the entrepreneur side, there are times I feel like I am running around like a chicken with its head cut off. One minute it is a sales call, then it is a product thing, then I have an investor meeting, then it is million other little things to take care of. Sometimes it seems all these things are happening in the same segments of time and they are all "priorities".

It is all chaotic and kinetic and wildly exciting, but it also makes getting work accomplished somewhat difficult. Because there are days I am constantly switching in and out of conversations and tasks and meetings and messages, no activity ever gets as much attention or benefit of full thought as I would like.

That is to be expected. In a corporate job, you can schedule and plan out things in an orderly way around your meetings and coffee breaks and lunch excursions. Often the rhythm of it all affords one time to build out chunks of time. Sure, there are jobs that are just hectic by nature. Then there are times when times pick up and the pace quickens, but things tend to get back to a rhythm.

But in all the hustle and bustle where there are constant interruptions and updates and critical deadlines, you can only parcel out small bits of time to any one task. In the process to pushing through stuff, you are also mentally changing gears like you would change gears when mountain biking over some particularly treacherous terrain. It exacts more mental energy and concentration. You are focused more on the short term adjustments and switches than on the overall goals and bigger picture.

People call this type of activity multi-tasking, but I think of it more as context switching. It is not the tasks themselves or that you have a lot of them, but the fact that you are trying to jump in and out of different tasks quickly. If I were to sum it up I would say context switching is productivity killing. Scientists have dug into the mental toil of multi-tasking and identified the switching as where the real cost is extracted when it comes to productivity. Your brain needs time to stop one task and gear up to the next one, and each switch takes a bit of time. Thus you tend to make more mistakes, overlook things, and make poorer decisions.

What can be done to minimize this context switching? My friend and productivity extraordinaire Clay mentioned a good idea though when I saw him the other week. He said to parcel out days to focus mainly on one area (or at least break it up along mornings and afternoons). Thus there would be an investor day, a marketing day, an operations day, etc. By scheduling things in these blocks you can reduce the whipsaw shifts that occur throughout the day.