How to avoid context switching when working several projects [#66]

I have a MacBook from 2020 that I’ve been using on a daily basis for 4.5 years. It still gets the job done surprisingly well. But sometimes, it slows down a lot – specifically, when I have a lot of tabs open and switch regularly between them. 

This happens because computers only have a limited amount of Random Access Memory (RAM): it’s used to store things that are currently being worked on. If too many things are going on at the same time, RAM will be overloaded – and thus not enough resources available for processing. 

Some browse use a strategy to purge unused tabs from RAM (eg. Chrome). This works when you don’t switch tabs often, but if you open a lot of tabs a lot of times, RAM becomes overloaded. 

The human brain functions similarly: 

Last week, I published a post about the concept of Attention Residue: when you switch contexts between two tasks, there is some leftover of the first task running in your brain. If you switch tasks too many time, eventually your brain’s RAM will be overloaded. You won’t get anything done. 

But as a proud generalist like yourself, dear reader, chances are high that you’ve got several things going on – inviting you to switch between tasks more often. Which is less than ideal, because: 

Context Switching is bad for your productivity. 

It’s hard enough to avoid context switching when working one job – but how do you do it when you’re working several ones? 

That’s the topic of today’s newsletter. Let’s dive in. 🤿

[1] Allocate different days to different projects 

Every morning, you’re blessed with a fresh mind and zero context. 100% freed up RAM, so to speak. 

Fractional executives leverage this: they work 2 days for company A (eg. Mondays and Thursdays), one day for company B (Wednesdays), and the remaining days for company C (or their own business). This also works for most part-time jobs – so if you’re stacking part-time jobs on top of each other, you won’t have to switch that often by allocating entire days to them. 

In the case of a portfolio career, you could use it as follows: 

• Monday: Content Writing
• Tuesday + Wednesday: Freelance Work
• Thursday + Friday: Running your own small business

Even when you work on mostly one thing, you can make this work.

I’ve separated my week into 3 “manager” days and 2 “maker” days – Monday through Wednesday, I run my business, take meetings, prospect, do admin stuff. On Thursdays and Fridays, I try to avoid meetings and just produce – whether that’s content, focused work on new sales pitches, product lines, you name it. 

But for some things, this doesn’t work. 

Spending an entire day on content writing would be insane. I can barely do 2 hours at a time.

Enter alternative 2: 

[2] Allocating the same time every day to different contexts 

Think back to when you were a student: during the day, you’d study; at night, you’d work – at a bar or restaurant. The contexts were clearly separated, not just by location, but by timing; to the extent that it became routine. 

Now that most work happens digitally, the separation of location is more fleeting – especially as freelancer or portfolio careerist. 

But what still does work is to break down the day into different, recurring time slots: 

• Write for the first hour in the morning (Project A: Content Writing)
• Deep Work for the next two (Project B: Entrepreneurship)
• Process Email + Admin (Project B)
• Lunch Break
• Meeting Slots (Project B + C: Freelance Work)
• Process Email + Admin (Project C)
• Optional other deep work slot (Project C)

This way, you get to work on every project on a daily basis. The clusters help keeping context switches to a minimum. 

But there’s more. 

[3] The 4 Buckets of Time Spent 

In “5 Types of Wealth”, Sahil Bloom describes four buckets of time: 

1. Management: time spent on calls, meetings, emails, admin
2. Creation: any sort of building, coding, writing, recording
3. Consumption: reading, listening, conversation
4. Ideation: journaling, brainstorming, walking in silence

Usually, Management takes up most of our time.

If all of humanity would just manage all the time, nothing would get done.

Even as a manager, it is your job to inspire your team, bring & evaluate ideas, and make sure the others grow. It’s difficult to help others grow when you don’t grow yourself. 

Just managing is not an option. Creation is equally important, and creation becomes much more difficult if you never ideate. All of that follows from consumption: 

“Almost every idea is downstream from what you consume.” — James Clear

Without consumption, there’s no creation, no ideation. Sometimes, I get so busy that I barely find any time to read. A few weeks later, writing becomes infinitely harder, because I’m starting to run out of ideas. 

This is an important reframe: content consumption isn’t just a leisure activity – it’s the very thing that empowers you to do your work. (And no, social media does not count as consumption, that’s leisure.)

Let’s apply this to your projects: likely, all projects need management and creation time. Ideation and consumption can be generalized, as they’re more unstructured. 

In a way, this framework is an extension of the Maker vs. Manager schedule: you need to distinguish between making (creation) and managing, and then you get the added consumption + ideation aspects on top. 

Let’s put it all together. 

[4] Time Blocks

“If it’s not on the calendar, it doesn’t exist.”

Meetings have a place in your calendar. Individual work often doesn’t have a place in your calendar. 

Implicitly, this means you put others’ priorities above your own. Sounds unhealthy. Let’s change that by putting your activities into your calendar as well (or have an app like Motion or Amie do it for you). 

1. First, break down the different things you’re working on. For me, that’s building Generalyst, writing this very newsletter, and playing Lacrosse. We’ll leave out the occasional one-off consulting engagement. 
2. Decide whether you want to allocate days or times to these activities. (I’m picking times). Assign those. 
3. Then, assign one of the four buckets to each slot. 
4. Assess whether your time allocation works for you. 

Your calendar could look like this (applied to my projects, doesn’t reflect my actual calendar): 

A lot of management going on here, which probably isn’t ideal – but as it stands today, I’m the only person working in the company, so nobody else can manage operations for me. 

More pointers: 

• Lunchtime is either for lifting, meeting people, or consuming information. I count lunches with others as consumption, as I’m learning a ton from the people I meet. 
• Meetings are batched into afternoons, with Thursdays being blocked off completely. This allows me to fully focus one day, with plenty of time available for meetings. Some flexibility is necessary, obviously, but this is the objective. 
• One big ideation slot helps with problem solving, but you could probably do more than that. 

There’s very few macro context-switches in this schedule – and that’s good. This way, you don’t go back and forth between different projects, but have clearly assigned slots for each of them. 

Minimizing micro context-switches is a different story. 

How to build deep focus is one of the main pillars I cover in-depth in Personal Productivity OS – where you learn how to build systems to reclaim up to 4 hours per day (that you can then use to build a portfolio career, for example!).

There’s a 30-day money-back guarantee, and if you use the code CONTEXTSWITCH, you’ll get 20% off at signup.

Here's what one student had to say:

(I’m consciously putting this at the end of the newsletter so you, well, don’t have to switch contexts. 😉)

If there’s one thing you try this week, make it this: 

Spend 30 minutes daily working on just one thing, without distractions.

Consider it a workout for your focus muscle. Good things will happen. 

Happy Monday! 

LFG. 🔥

Whenever you're ready, there are four ways I can help you:

[1] Reclaim up to 4 hours per day and find time to do the things you've always wanted to do by enrolling into Personal Productivity OS.

[2] Hire your next Founder's Associate or other business generalist position with my startup, Generalyst Recruiting.

[3] You could also find your next startup job in Europe by simply applying as a candidate.

[4] Learn how you can build your career as a generalist by subscribing to this newsletter. ⬇️