How Is Everyone Handling Context Switching?
How Is Everyone Handling Context Switching?
The average knowledge worker switches context every three minutes. Slack notification. Email arrives. JIRA ticket update. Calendar reminder. Each switch costs about 23 minutes to get back to deep focus. The math is brutal - you never actually reach deep focus.
The Problem Is Not Discipline
People frame context switching as a willpower problem. Just close Slack. Just batch your email. Just block your calendar. But the work behind those notifications is real. Someone needs a response. That ticket needs updating. The email requires action.
The issue is that most context switches involve mechanical work wrapped in a thin layer of judgment. Reading the email takes five seconds. Deciding the response takes ten seconds. Actually typing the response, finding the right link, formatting it properly - that takes five minutes. The five minutes is what kills you, not the decision.
Batch Attention, Not Batch Ignoring
Instead of ignoring notifications (which creates anxiety), batch the mechanical work. Let an AI agent monitor your channels and prepare responses. When you are ready to context switch - on your schedule, not Slack's - review the prepared actions in a batch. Five approvals in two minutes instead of five interruptions across two hours.
This is different from auto-responding. The agent queues the work. You make the decisions. But you make them all at once during a scheduled review instead of reactively throughout the day.
What This Looks Like in Practice
Your agent watches email, Slack, and tickets. It drafts responses, prepares updates, and organizes action items. Every 90 minutes, you spend five minutes reviewing the batch. Approve, edit, or reject each item. Then go back to your actual work.
Your focus blocks stay intact. Your responsiveness stays high. The mechanical work gets done.
Fazm is an open source macOS AI agent. Open source on GitHub.