Jethro's Braindump

The Cost of Context Switching

Minimizing context switching is one of the best ways to increase productivity. I see this phenomenon occur in the systems I implement:

  1. Getting Things Done (GTD): Separating the cognitive process into individual tasks: e.g. capturing, processing, doing.
  2. In Emacs, context switching is minimized by doing everything within Emacs itself: writing code, writing notes, reading email. Using Org-mode as the glue has been extremely helpful.
  3. In building srs.ly, I consider the importance of ease of prompt creation. This reduces context switching: e.g. from reading the article to hopping over to Anki and creating flashcards.