Context-switching – one of the worst productivity killers

Like a deep sea diver, it can take an hour to get to working depth on some problem. It is extremely disruptive to receive some random interruption, when you are working “at depth”, like being instantly pulled to the surface. You are probably unable to get back down to depth that same day afterwards. Most people not doing the particular work that we know, have no idea it’s like this.

Article talks about context switching at the task level but it also happens at the code level in codebases with long inheritance hierarchies or responder chains, because then you keep swapping the code that's on display within your window or screen.

Anyway, I was hoping to find a study that supports the idea that context-switching does negatively affect productivity, but there's none. I feel like someone must have studied that a long time ago. Does anyone know any references?

Only midly related, I'm thinking about building a desktop to to help with combatting context-switching as an dev/product person/knwoledge workers. If you've every longed for a tool to understand your context and assist you in staying within please share your ideas or get in touch.

Like learning, doesn't this depend on the person? I like to have a couple of things on the go, otherwise I can get bored focused on 1 thing - sometimes you just need a break to think things through, and often I do that by working on something completely different or simple.

Meetings are easy to solve compared to constant distractions from Slack/Teams/etc.

Blocking time on your calendar does nothing to stop those.