Working full-time at LinkedIn, Sentitrac on the side,...

Working full-time at LinkedIn, Sentitrac on the side, and simultaneously renovating my recently purchased home has required a lot of context switching. Luckily, I've gotten pretty good at this, but context switching remains a perpetual challenge. What makes it easier, though?" "" "One key is to find ways to remove potential distractions when entering a deep context. Not every task requires the same context; some are easier to switch between. So when I need to work on something that will take me 20+ minutes to load into my brain, I protect myself from distractions ahead of time. " "" "There are many ways to accomplish this. One is to craft your work schedule around when you are most productive and when the fewest distractions tend to come in. For me, that's early in the morning. On top of that, finding ways to snooze and schedule incoming messages is key: turn Slack notifications off, put your phone in "Do Not Disturb," schedule emails for a later time, etc." "" "Lastly, for any periods where you know you will get interrupted, work on your most interruptible work! For example, my afternoons have recently often been distracted by contractors needing my input, questions, and pings in Slack around various topics that are often not too urgent, meetings, etc. During these periods, I knock off all the work that's easy to switch in and out of, like checking my calendar for the next day, doing some code reviews, and, of course, answering those Slack messages!

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Original post on LinkedIn