Episode 125: Ending Evening Exhaustion by Reducing Context Switching

How often are you interrupted in a given day? And what about spacing out...getting distracted and then needing to come back to what you were doing before “Squirrel!” happened? There’s no way to eliminate interruptions and distractions, but there’s no question that they can definitely contribute to stress and exhaustion, where you feel wrung out at the end of the day. Let’s take a look at what causes this and what to do to prevent that end-of-day exhaustion.

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Transcript

 (Transcript is auto-generated and may contain minor errors.)

How often  do you think you're interrupted in a given day? I mean, some of you may be fortunate enough to work in a hands on trade where you're able to go from one job site to the next. You don't deal with a lot of people. So, not very many interruptions. I had a relative with ADHD  who worked at a job. like that and absolutely loved it because he felt like finally I am really able to focus. This is a great fit for me. On the other end of things, you might have a job like being a daycare worker where you have a bunch of kids. They're trying to get your attention at any given moment. You need to kind of shift your attention from noticing what's happening in this corner, what's happening in this corner, and so forth. So lots of  Distractions and interruptions there. And for many of us, we're somewhere in the middle. Right? Um, but no matter what your day looks like, it's a safe bet that you're being interrupted over and over again in a given day. If you just stop and you think about emails, notifications, texts,  phone calls, people just knocking on your door, meetings.  All of these things can pull you off task,  and then you need to get back on task. And that can be really tiring. That can be difficult. So we're going to talk today about how to deal with this inevitability of daily life today, and  how you can decrease, Your distractions and interruptions so that you can increase the energy that you have left at the end of the day and not feel so wrung out By the time you get home.

 So what happens when we are interrupted? This is sometimes called context switching or alternating attention.  And multitasking has been called something different because folks have said, well, you're doing two things at the same time. But honestly, it's really the same thing most of the time. You feel like you're doing two things at the same time, but in reality, you're switching back and forth. So it's not really doing two things at exactly the same time. There’s a little bit of going back and forth. Almost always with multitasking.  

What's happening when we're doing that is your prefrontal cortex, right here behind your eyebrows, it's a highly advanced area of the human brain, and it is responsible for attentional tasks and a lot of other higher level functions. And so when we're talking about focusing your attention, switching, switching back, You're really relying on your prefrontal cortex.   When you get interrupted or distracted, your attention needs to go to the new thing, and then it needs to come back. So every time that happens, there's a reset that happens that your prefrontal cortex is responsible for, and that can eat up your time, that can eat up your energy.

Different studies looking at context switching have found that it can take between one second and  and nine minutes to be able to get back to what you were doing after your attention has been pulled away. Even when we're looking at one second  of time needed to pull your attention back, in certain situations, like when you're driving a car, that can mean the difference between life and death, literally, and of course, in less extreme circumstances too. Think about those several minutes that are needed to draw your attention back over and over again. Even if you're sitting at your desk just doing your work,  the cost can definitely add up. If you think about the course of a day, how often that happens, it's really no wonder that we feel tired at the end of the day.  Psychologist David Meier estimates that we can use up as much as 40 percent of our workday just getting our brain to reset because it's constantly being pulled this way and that.

 Another challenge with this is that interruptions and distractions are not just external.  We are not just dealing with somebody tapping on our door saying, do you have a minute? Or our child saying that they want a snack when we're in the middle of a task. We do it to ourselves, too. Oftentimes we Feel like our attention is waning, or our energy is waning, and we want a quick dopamine hit. So we reach for what's handy, our phones.  And we think to ourselves, Okay, let me just spend a few minutes.  Checking the news headlines, checking the email, let me spend a few minutes with my favorite game or watching some videos, and then I'll get back on track. 

Now we all need breaks, no question, but the challenge here is when we take these breaks for a quick little dopamine hit,  it can work in the direction that we want in the short term. We can definitely feel like, okay, now I'm more awake, now I'm happier, that sort of thing. But, in the long run, we can definitely feel more tense when we don't have that opportunity, more restless, feeling like we are craving getting on our favorite app, feeling like it's increasingly difficult. to just stay focused and get the work done. And, of course, we can also get sucked into doing the break, just a little break, except it doesn't turn into a little break, it turns out to be a longer break, and then we feel bad about ourselves. Oh my gosh, I did it again. What's wrong with me? Where is the day going?

A study was done in 2023 called the Anatomy of Work Global Index Study, and in this study, they looked at a number of factors, including how much discomfort people reported feeling when they did not have free access to their phones, as well as symptoms of burnout with their job. And they found that 65 percent of workers who reported feeling uncomfortable when they didn't have free access to their phones also reported experiencing symptoms of burnout, compared to 45 percent of people who did not experience discomfort when being away from their phones reporting experiencing burnout symptoms. So, a 20 percent difference between the two groups. 

So if we all have to deal with these interruptions, distractions, context switching, what can we do about it to mitigate its effects and not feel so tired, not feel prone to burnout as readily? 

 Well, one thing that we can do is block out time for your high priority tasks, tasks that require focused attention. Let other people know that you need to put your head down and work without being disturbed. I know that this is more difficult in some environments than others, but it, but it truly is important. And a lot of us don't think to ask for it because we feel guilty, we feel like I should be able to muscle through this, but seriously, take a look at what are the tasks that really require focused attention, the ones that are probably really important, and then see what you can do to try to minimize interruptions.

And of course you can minimize the interruptions on your own. By looking at, can I not only silence my phone, turn off the notifications, but also can I go on airplane mode so that I don't even have the Wi Fi to deal with at all.  Like going offline to do your work, having the work available offline, and then all the Internet related disturbances, all the pop up ads and so forth, go away.  

We can also look at grouping similar tasks together. One thing that can really contribute to context switching is feeling like, okay, I'm writing the expense report. And now I'm dealing with email, and now I'm writing the next part of the expense report, and now I'm returning this phone call, and now I'm going to a meeting, 

so, if you can, for instance, look at what are my recurring tasks, that I do several times a week, can I try to put them together, so that I've got a block where this is my time for doing this kind of task, um, during the day or during the week.

 And notice when you feel like you need to switch apps. Many of us switch apps over and over during the work day. And even though computers have advanced and now they can switch apps really quickly, our brains need a little bit of time to get caught up. 

Getting back to email, That's a good example some people feel like they need to check email over and over during the day. And this can actually be a dopamine hit in disguise, even though email is not intrinsically enjoyable for most of us. Just feeling like, cool, I got that done. Email's taken care of, can end up having that draw and it's contributing to context switching. So instead, If you can, for instance, say I'm going to do email at this time and this time during the day.  

And one thing to consider, too, is how much of your mental energy does email take up? For a lot of us, it doesn't really take a lot of mental energy. It's just, it's something that has to happen every day. But it doesn't take as much mental energy as some of the more core things. areas of our work. Think about putting those areas of work that really require our energy, the things that we're good at, that people seek us out for, the things we're hired to do. During our higher energy times. We all have higher and lower energy times during the day. So email is probably not a higher energy activity and it's probably best left to later in the day. Now I know a lot of people feel anxious about this. I don't want to leave it for later in the day. Well, I mean, you can specify a limited number of senders, for instance, to be high priority so that they pop up at the top of your box. You can glance and see, does my spouse need something from me? Does my boss need something from me? And then, bang, okay. Not looking at it again until the middle of the day or whatever.

 And to reduce the need for a quick dopamine hit, you want to think about making getting adequate sleep and rest a priority.  eating so that your blood sugar is more stable. Avoiding skipping meals, eating foods that will give you sustained energy, protein,  complex carbohydrates, little bit of fruit to give you quick energy, but that combined with protein to help stabilize your energy. And you also want to have regular time set aside for. Activities that will give you more lasting joy. Not just the quick hit. So thinking about things that you do enjoy and setting aside time for that, whether it's walking your dog, or meditating, or reading a book,  or doing a hobby, or catching up with friends. Making sure that you've got that time set aside so that you have that to look forward to can help reduce the need to keep interrupting yourself with a quick boost of dopamine. 

It can be useful to notice if there are certain apps that really feel like they're becoming habitual, where you're not even really thinking about it anymore, just when you start to feel tired or bored, you grab your phone and you're just banged. You're on that app or apps where you feel like you get sucked in and then you spend more time than you intended and you feel bad about yourself. These are apps to consider deleting off your phone as an experiment. Now this does tend to make you tense. If you're used to just grabbing your phone and going to that app, it can make you feel tense in the short term. But in the long term It can often be really helpful. And I'm not saying, like, what, I can never use that app.

 I'm just saying, you can absolutely pick up your phone, and you can use that, but you just need to go to the browser version of it. And the reason that can be helpful is because it just slows the process down a little bit, so that you basically are not getting the  pick up the phone, bang, there it is. 

 The last tip that I have for you is, research is showing us now that the language that you use, whether you're talking to other people or just what you think internally, does make a difference when looking at forming new habits.  If you say, I'm trying to not spend so much time on social media. You're less likely to succeed than if you say, I don't have Instagram on my phone.   Instead of saying, I'm trying to check email less frequently. If you say, I check email at 1 o'clock and 5 o'clock, for example, then that is more likely to contribute to you actually making strides in this area than if you say, well, I'm trying to do this, I'm working on this. 

So I hope these tips have helped you. Have a wonderful week, and we'll see you next time.