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Comment by kobiguru | Hacker News Reader

I try not context switch. My strategy is to focus on one thing get it done and then move to the next. Sort of like going through a To-Do list. I add rechecking time in all tasks I do. It happens a lot more while texting, slack massages, or quick -short emails than on big project because of repeated checks.

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I asked since I earlier was in a role that involved a lot of context switching as well as responding to people's messages or queries via multiple mediums of communications. Here is what I did when I realized that my productivity was going down due to missing out details or making silly mistakes,

1. Used slack's status to inform people when I am in the middle of a task so to imply that I will reply late. Disabled slack notifications and stopped using the slack app (instead had it as a pinned tab on the browser). I only replied if I am able to give it my 100% attention.

2. Via experimenting came across a fixed number of things I will do in a day based on priority. For any task that comes in either asked my reporting manager for it's priority or noted it down to be completed as part of the next day's tasks. There are always days when you are going to be overwhelmed by the things for you to do and it is okay to talk to your manager to have things taken off your pile.

3. Write down notes as much as possible about events related to work. It might be unstructured at first but try formatting it at the end of the day and slowly the ability to write good notes will kick in. This will also aid in identifying why you might have missed out a detail. It is an overhead to log summarized information down but it could do you good in the long run.

4. Slowly phase out and remove your rechecking time. It provides a safety cushion for your brain to slack off on the first run and even if you are careful, you might miss out on details during rechecking because your brain becomes used to what you have written. It is completely fine to ask for help from colleagues or your manager in case you are not sure.

Hope this helps you.

Yes this is helpful. I do take extensive notes while reading books or listening to podcasts but never thought of doing it as part of work, in terms of documenting my process and make develop some kind of checklist to run before I push changes.

These used to be my style of writing notes. I usually substituted some of the information here with a link to the ticket I was working on so my points were shorter but you can be as elaborate as time allows you to. For eg:

1. X reached out asking for a financial report. Wants booking data between March'20 and June'20. More information on ticket.

2. Y let me know that I would need to check file `list_orders_service.rb` to understand our order processing logic.

3. X also wants the data to be grouped by city and ordered by most number of orders.

4. Q pinged me to let me know that there has been a new column `order_revised_on` added to the orders table and to include it in the changes I am making for the new orders page. Need to communicate the same to Y via updating the ticket.

5. M pinged me with a new bug I need to fix on priority. Confirmed with him on moving X's financial report generation to tomorrow. Will update on ticket

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