Unseen yet impactful, context switching silently drains productivity. It's a hidden cost often underestimated in our multitasking world. Let's delve into its implications, exploring how it affects our efficiency and what we can do to mitigate its effects.
When it comes to work, especially engineering work, the cost of multitasking skyrockets
For software engineers, all tasks fall under cognitive function, and as a result, it requires a lot of context switches.
- Batch things, stack rank them in preferred order, and execute
- Be careful when batching them, and when naming them
Always batch
Depending on the task’s size, batching may take the same amount of time as completing the task
- Practicing on smaller tasks will make you more efficient for bigger ones
- Once you become proficient at batching, you can decide to skip it for smaller tasks if you wish
The Cost of Context Switching
The cost of context switching is huge. One of the effective ways to counter this is by batching.
- Batching tasks by function allows you to take the tasks within a function and sub-divide them further into smaller functions to reduce the time required to complete them.
Batching reduces the scope of the task and makes it specific
Every task requires identification, understanding, and then execution
- Batching separates all tasks into specific buckets
- Saving the context switching cost of jumping from one bucket to another
- Example: Sorting silverware and batched them while putting them in a drawer saves time and costs
