Context Switching Taxes Your Mental Health and Performance at Work

As modern professionals, we’re all doing our best to quickly adapt to evolving technology and wrap our minds around hot topics like AI and the latest SaaS platforms that help boost business. However, during this massive tech expansion that has taken place over the last decade, something sinister has snuck its way into our daily workday habits: context switching.

In the digital workspace, context switching is when you repeatedly shift focus between various applications, tasks, and projects. From logging in to your laptop and responding to emails, to checking messages from co-workers in Slack, to addressing customer notifications in Salesforce, to checking payment statuses in QuickBooks, to reviewing the latest projects on monday.com, and so on…The need to answer the latest pings, notifications, messages, urgent requests, and more has resulted in next-level distraction and anxiety for many employees.

Why context switching is costly

While the intention behind context switching is to get work done quickly, research indicates the reality of context switching creates a heavy burden on your workday rhythm, focus, mental health, and productivity. Research conducted by University of California, Irvine shows the costs of these frequent workplace interruptions:

• After only 20 minutes of interrupted performance, people reported significantly higher stress, frustration, workload, effort, and pressure
• Interruptions lead people to change not only work rhythms, but strategies and mental states
• When people are constantly interrupted, they develop a mode of working faster (and writing less) to compensate for the time they know they will lose by being interrupted, but this comes at the cost of increased stress, frustration, time pressure, etc.

The downsides of context switching at work

1. Declined productivity

Repeatedly (and spontaneously) transitioning between your apps, tasks, and notifications depletes your time and mental energy, which takes a direct hit on your daily productivity. Every time you switch contexts, you need time to adjust and reorient yourself in order to regain focus on your current task. This can create inefficiencies and delays in completing your work.

2. Declined focus and concentration

As a major disruptor of your focus and concentration, context switching makes it hard to maintain attention on your current tasks. Constantly shifting between different projects or topics can fragment your attention span and reduce the ability to deeply engage with any single task. As a result, you may struggle to get in the right zone to product quality work.

3. Growing mental fatigue

Context switching also can contribute to your mental fatigue and cognitive overload. Trying to juggle multiple tasks simultaneously can strain cognitive resources and lead to feelings of complete overwhelm and exhaustion. This can impair your decision-making abilities, creativity, and problem-solving skills.

App overload affects context switching

Since much of today’s work is managed via software, the growth in companies’ tech stacks and app usage directly correlates with employees’ context switching, app toggling, and focus-busting issues. Productiv’s 2024 State of SaaS report gives an updated look at the current state of app usage for businesses across multiple industries:

• The average SaaS portfolio decreased to 342 apps, dropping from 374 in 2022
• SaaS portfolio size reached a ceiling at the beginning of 2023, then dropped down by 10% from the 2022 average by the end of 2023 (signaling an upward trend of consolidation)

Graph courtesy of Productiv

• Despite the desire to keep SaaS proliferation in check, the average number of SaaS apps per team grew 27% from 2022 to 2023
• Engineering continues to be the department with the most SaaS apps, increasing from 87 to 108
• IT & Security saw the largest percentage growth in the number of SaaS apps at 33%, driven by point solution tools as well as apps to help them uncover greater ROI across the business
• Customer Success saw the second highest percent growth as the importance of customer retention magnified between 2022 and 2023

Graph courtesy of Productiv

Streamline your app overload with Glances

Continually switching apps, tasks, and focus is bad for business, but it seems impossible to avoid these days. With nearly 20 years of expertise in software integrations for popular business apps, our team created a patented way to integrate your tech stack and do more with your data in one simple place.

Glances connects your favorite business apps while allowing you to keep working within your platform of choice. And with Glances Actions, you can create streamlined workflows that can save you up to 20 minutes per task.

See how it all works with a free trial of Glances today!

More helpful steps

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