Context switching is the mind-killer
The curse of adding yet another project
There’s a famous quote from the science fiction novel Dune that starts like this:
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer.
During a Clubhouse conversation back in 2020, Elon Musk said:
Fear is not the mind-killer, context switching is the mind-killer
This has been so true to me lately. With many ongoing projects, I often find myself just scratching the surface of something, before I’m suddenly working on something else. I’ve visualized it to myself like this:
When you add another project, time per project goes down, of course. But in addition, for every extra project, the total project time goes down. And the loss of project time is now used for administrative work. This non-value adding work comes in many different shapes and forms, and it has serious side-effects:
You’re only scratching the surface
Initiatives that would yield big results, and move the needle significantly, require focus and time. Instead of spending time on those, it’s now more important to just do something. That way you can justify for yourself that all projects have some progression. Further, if the next project 1 task is a daunting one, requiring a lot of focus and energy, it can be more tempting to do the easy, low-hanging project 2 task.You perform worse
Not only do you not focus on the right thing, and dedicate time to do it well, you perform worse at more things. You’re putting more low-quality work out into the world - and you know it. What a shit feeling 🤢Your project ownership is reduced
As you have less time to work on each project, your feeling of ownership declines too. Who’s able to feel strong ownership of something they dedicate little time to, where they do just the bare minimum, and where results are not to their standards?
This goes for individuals, teams, departments, and companies. We did this mistake at Poption. We never found product-market fit, but built many products and features for different recruiting use cases. One problem was that we didn’t sunset anything, we didn’t shut anything down. If we built a product or feature that got some traction, but not enough for doubling down on it, we kept it alive. That way our list of projects was accumulating as we tried to find product-market fit.
Another example was how we wanted to build multiple features at the same time, with a small tech team. There was little room for focus, and a big chunk of the “Admin” time was now spent on stress, fear of not meeting expectations, and frustration with an over-ambitious plan.
Don’t work on all your important projects. Not you. Not your team. Not your colleagues. Prioritize, then focus. Work on what truly matters, one thing at a time. Because context switching is the mind-killer.
Spot on!