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You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. Hey, listeners. We know you're all about making the most of your time. So why not turn your lunch break into a growth break with Front Row Seat with Ken Coleman. Every Tuesday, Ken sits down with top experts to explore the real questions that help you thrive at work and in life. Questions like, what are the 10 best foods for your memory? Or how can you ask for the raise you want and actually get it?
If you love thoughtful advice and smart strategies, check out Front Row Seat with Ken Coleman, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's tip is to free up time for meaningful work by reducing the time you spend switching between tasks.
Today's tip comes from an article in the Harvard Business Review about what the authors call the toggling tax. That is, the time and energy that goes to switching between applications. You probably know what I mean. You're in PowerPoint and realize you need to look up a statistic, so you go to the web. Your homepage is the New York Times, so you quickly scan the latest headlines before searching for the data you need.
A few minutes later, you're back in PowerPoint, working on your presentation, when you get a Teams chat notification. You switch over and quickly reply to the message. Then, while you are already interrupted, you figure you might as well pop into email to see if there is anything urgent. Finally, you make it back to PowerPoint.
In just a few minutes, you have been in PowerPoint, the New York Times, wherever you got the data you needed, PowerPoint again, then Teams, then email, then back to PowerPoint. And you probably repeat this sort of sequence dozens of times per day. The authors of the article say this context switching takes a toll. For starters, it can increase stress. But beyond that, every switch takes some amount of time.
The authors used software to measure how long it took for 137 workers across 20 teams to do the next step after toggling. In other words, to get used to the initial application again and figure out where they were and what comes next. They found that it took just over two seconds per switch to reorient and re-engage, and that people switched contexts almost 1,200 times per day.
That's a total of almost four hours in a week of toggling tax, or just shy of about a tenth of a standard work week. Now, of course, you probably lose more time than that in distractions, reading headlines or deleting emails that you didn't need to receive in the first place. But the toggling tax alone can be substantial. If you are trying to get more done at work and spend less time at work so you've got time to do other things, it pays to try to reduce your toggling tax. So how do you do that?
If you are managing people, it would be smart to see what you can do as a team to limit interruptions and set expectations. Maybe you agree not to send each other messages for a few hours during the day unless it is absolutely urgent. But even if you are just in charge of you, awareness helps. Notice when you switch contexts and consider whether the switch is truly necessary.
In some cases, you may be able to postpone and batch some of your switches. For instance, if you are working on a report and need to incorporate content from another source, just put the content you need in brackets, such as number of sites in 2024 and number of sites in 2014, and highlight it so you can see it. Or you can use the publishing abbreviation TK for to come as a placeholder.
Then, when you go to the app that will provide the information you need, you can scan through the document, collect all the information you need at once, and enter it in the places where it belongs. I also recommend minimizing apps you don't need and turning off notifications. Out of sight is out of mind. So if you don't know you have email, Slack, Teams, or text messages, you won't be tempted to switch over and process them. Even if your workplace does expect a quick response,
you can probably be unplugged for at least a half hour between message checks. That might eliminate a dozen or more toggles. This time of year, no one needs a reminder that there are some taxes we have to pay. But the toggling tax is not one of them. Or if we do have to switch contexts, at least we have some control over our toggling tax rate. If you can reduce your toggling tax by half, you may be able to free up a couple of hours a week for your most important work.
or for doing something besides work. Either of those sounds like a welcome tax break to me. In the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening. And here's to making the most of our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach me at laura at lauravandercam.com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, listeners. We know you're all about making the most of your time. So why not turn your lunch break into a growth break with Front Row Seat with Ken Coleman. Every Tuesday, Ken sits down with top experts to explore the real questions that help you thrive at work and in life.
Questions like, what are the 10 best foods for your memory? Or how can you ask for the raise you want and actually get it? If you love thoughtful advice and smart strategies, check out Front Row Seat with Ken Coleman.
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