Context Switching Is Stealing Your Day
Context switching has been hitting me hard lately.As much as we try to stay focused, a Slack message, an email, or a phone alert can derail an otherwise productive day. It’s rarely the interruption itself that does the damage. It’s everything that comes after it.
An IEEE Software study found that developers see three to five interruptions per day, and each one costs about 20 minutes once you include the interruption and the time spent handling it. That adds up to roughly 1-1.5 hours a day, or 15–20% of the workday spent on interruptions.
Every interruption you give your attention to comes with a recovery cost. You’re not just switching screens. You’re rebuilding your mental model: what you were doing, why you were doing it, what you already tried, and what the next step was supposed to be.
That’s how a day can feel full and still leave you with very little that feels finished. So how do you claw back your day to feel more productive and less “busy”?
The Cost of Restarting a Task
The reason context switching is hard to notice is because of how it shows up.
You don’t feel like you “lost 20 minutes.” You feel a small drag. You sit back down, and you’re slightly foggy. You reread the ticket. You skim the last few messages. You reopen tabs you already had open. You try to remember what you decided and what you were going to do next.
None of that looks like wasted time. It looks very similar to our typical work.
That’s also why it can mess with your confidence. When you restart the same task five times, you stop trusting your own progress. You start wondering if the work is unclear, or if you’re just off today. Most of the time, it’s neither. You’re paying for resets that your day never planned for.
The shift that’s helped me is treating focus like a limited budget.
- If I spend it everywhere, I end the day with activity and no closure.
- If I protect it in a couple of places, the same day suddenly has traction.
The goal isn’t to eliminate interruptions. That’s not realistic. The goal is to reduce the number of restarts and make them cheaper when they occur.
Identifying Your Distractions
Before you try to fix context switching, it helps to see where it’s actually coming from.Tomorrow, keep a single tally called restarts.
Any time you return to a task and have to reload it, add a tick mark. Rereading the ticket. Skimming the last few messages. Reopening tabs to remember where you were.
At the end of the day, look for the pattern. Which work item got restarted the most, and what kept pulling you away?
You’ll usually find the same thing: a small number of repeat offenders quietly eating a big chunk of your day.
Once you can name those offenders, you can fix them with a couple of small constraints instead of trying to power through with “more discipline.”
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Where can AI save you time?
My friends at Big Creek Growth put together a quick survey to spot the repetitive work you can hand off to automation.
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How to reduce the impact of context switching
Context switching is always going to . The goal is fewer resets and faster recovery.
1. Create a Focus Block
Block off 45–60 minutes for the one task that matters most today. Silence notifications and use that time to get some deep work done. Pick a time that is easier for you to stay focused and avoid distractions.
2. Batch Reading Messages
Pick 3 times you purposefully check email and your phone. Late morning, lunch time, and mid-afternoon are good defaults. Outside those windows, messages become a queue instead of a trigger.
3. Make Re-Entry Easier
Before you switch tasks, leave yourself a quick breadcrumb. One line is enough: the next step. When you come back, you skip the rereading and tab-scanning.
4. Limit Active Work
The more tasks you have in-flight, the more expensive every interruption becomes. Aim for two meaningful items and one small admin task. Park the rest until something finishes.
You’re not going to be able to avoid every interruption, but you can stop paying the restart tax twenty times a day.
If your days have felt busy but not really productive, there’s a good chance you’re paying the restart tax.
The hard part about context switching is that it doesn’t look like a problem while it’s happening. Each interruption feels reasonable. The cost shows up later, when you sit down to do real work and realize you’ve spent most of your attention getting back to where you already were.
A useful way to think about this is in terms of capacity, not character. When your day is full of restarts, your output will look smaller even if you’re working hard. Focus on ensuring you have enough capacity and avoid time sinks.
Your goal is to be more intentional about when you switch, and to make it easier to come back when you do.