We’re always juggling multiple projects and commitments, and that cost can be quite high. Constantly switching between tasks can cost you up to 40% of your productivity, not to mention the stress you’ll feel from jumping around every few minutes. Even though you probably can’t control being stressed across many priorities, you can implement a few little rituals to make it a bit more manageable.
🧺 Batch your tiny tasks.
Instead of switching between lots of tiny tasks all day – reply to that email, expense that receipt, update that Jira ticket – batch them and store them for later. Then, schedule time in your calendar to go through your batch! (Depending on your role, that might be a single hour-long block or a few 15-minute blocks.)
Find a place that you can easily capture little tasks (a notebook, Notion, a to-do list) and then when something small comes up, capture it and move on. When your batch time comes around, you can then move right through your list! Physically capturing it in a place that you know you’ll look at later means you’ll feel less stressed about forgetting it, too.
⏰ Start with the most important stuff.
Take care of your highest priority at the start of the day before everything else interrupts you. That means you can tackle it while you’re freshest and most effective!
(Alternatively, you might decide to start with eating the frog so that you aren’t dreading it for the rest of the day. Either way, you know you’ll end the workday having made some progress on what matters.)
👋 Go off-grid… kind of.
Practically, you can’t actually just go disappear for a few days to get your work done, but there are ways you can replicate some of the benefits, like:
Go off-Slack for your dedicated project time. (Make sure you set a status so that your coworkers know you haven’t just disappeared!)
If you’re in the office, find a meeting room or another area away from your desk so that you aren’t interrupted.
Let your stakeholders know you’ll get back to them at a certain time, after you’ve knocked out this deep work.
😮💨 Take 2 minutes to transition.
When switching between projects or contexts, take 2 minutes to formalise the transition. There are lots of ways you can do this, so here are a few ideas to get you started:
Get a glass of water or tea
Take 3 deep breaths
Note down where you’re leaving off on your previous task
Note down what you want to get done in this focus block
Put your headphones in
Switch your music
Context switching in action
Even though you realistically can’t ever just have one project on the go, you can implement little tweaks to your routine to make it more manageable to jump between everything that needs your attention.
