#context-switching

Context Switching Is Your Worst Enemy

Your brain operates in a LIFO (Last In First Out) method; thus, context switching can be extremely detrimental to your productivity — especially if you’re being measured on the oldest thing on your to-do list.

Tom Robbins says you can’t manufacture creativity or wonderment, but you can pull yourself out of context so dramatically that you gawk in amazement at the ubiquitous everyday wonders you’re culturally conditioned to ignore. I think this is key: To get new ideas we need to see the world with new eyes–we need to evoke a novel way of seeing things. For me that involves throwing myself into new situations. Some of the thinkers I respect the most have credited travel, walks in the park, and marijuana as creativity catalysts. Really, its anything that triggers free association and the right conceptual collision. We need disruption of the profane so that we can engage with the sacred and creative.

It’s the nature of the Lead Developer’s role that affects the amount of time it takes him to complete tasks.