Context Switching

Imagine you are playing soccer, and then every thirty seconds someone makes you stop to do a math problem, and then go back to soccer. You would not be very good at either! Every time you switch what you are doing, your brain has to load new rules. This wastes energy and makes you tired. To be a brain pro, try to do all of your drawing at once, then all of your reading at once. Your brain will thank you for not making it jump back and forth!

Every time you switch your brain has to load new rules — and that wastes energy. Every context switch costs you twenty-three minutes. Not twenty-three seconds. Twenty-three minutes. That is the average time it takes for your brain to fully re-engage after an interruption. Check your phone once and you did not lose five seconds. You lost twenty-three minutes of depth. Do it six times in an hour and you never went deep at all. You spent the entire hour in the loading screen. The myth of multitasking is the most expensive lie in modern productivity. You cannot do two things at once. You can only switch between two things so fast that it feels like once. But it is not once. It is twice. Badly. The person who does one thing for four hours will always produce more than the person who does four things for one hour each. Not because they are smarter. Because they never left the room.

Context switching: ~23 minutes to re-engage after interruption due to attention residue. Multitasking is rapid switching performed poorly. The person who does one thing for four hours will always outperform four things for one hour. Because they never left the room.

SOUND: Someone changing radio stations constantly: the ears suffering from a brain that cannot commit.

SMELL: Walking from a bakery into a garage: the nose whiplashing between two incompatible worlds.

TASTE: Orange juice right after brushing your teeth: the taste of two contexts colliding violently.

TOUCH: Moving from a hot bath to a cold floor: the skin paying the switching cost in full.

SIGHT: Looking at your phone while watching a movie: the eyes proving that two screens means zero screens.

BODY: Trying to walk normally while dizzy: the body demonstrating what it feels like when the system cannot stabilize on one context.

Music: Idioteque by Radiohead

Part of Attention & Focus — CONSCIOUSNESS — Education Revelation