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Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,

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Speaker 1: This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's

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Speaker 1: tip is to free up time for meaningful work by

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Speaker 1: reducing the time you spend switching between tasks. Today's tip

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Speaker 1: comes from an article in the Harvard Business Review about

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Speaker 1: what the authors call the toggling tax, that is the

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Speaker 1: time and energy that goes to switching between applications. You

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Speaker 1: probably know what I mean. You're in PowerPoint and realize

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Speaker 1: you need to look up a statistic, so you go

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Speaker 1: to the web. Your homepage is The New York Times,

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Speaker 1: so you quickly scan the latest headlines before searching for

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Speaker 1: the data you need. A few minutes later, you're back

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Speaker 1: in PowerPoint working on your presentation. When you get a

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Speaker 1: team's chat note offication, you switch over and quickly reply

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Speaker 1: to the message. Then, while you are already interrupted, you

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Speaker 1: figure you might as well pop into email to see

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Speaker 1: if there is anything urgent. Finally, you make it back

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Speaker 1: to PowerPoint. In just a few minutes, you have been

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Speaker 1: in PowerPoint, the New York Times wherever you got the

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Speaker 1: data you needed, PowerPoint again, then teams, then email, then

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Speaker 1: back to PowerPoint, and you probably repeat this sort of

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Speaker 1: sequence dozens of times per day. The authors of the

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Speaker 1: articles say this context switching takes a toll for starters,

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Speaker 1: it can increase stress, but beyond that, every switch takes

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Speaker 1: some amount of time. The authors use software to measure

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Speaker 1: how long it took for one hundred and thirty seven

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Speaker 1: workers across twenty teams to do the next step after toggling,

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Speaker 1: in other words, to get used to the initial application

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Speaker 1: again and figure out where they were and what comes next.

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Speaker 1: They found that it took just over two seconds per

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Speaker 1: switch to reorient and re engage, and that people switched

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Speaker 1: contexts almost twelve hundred times per day. That's a total

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Speaker 1: of almost four hours and a week of toggling tax,

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Speaker 1: or just shy of about a tenth of a standard

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Speaker 1: work week. Now, of course, you probably lose more time

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Speaker 1: than that in distractions, reading headlines, or deleting emails that

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Speaker 1: you didn't need to receive in the first place, but

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Speaker 1: the toggling tax alone can be substantial. If you are

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Speaker 1: trying to get more done at work and spend less

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Speaker 1: time at work so you've got time to do other things,

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Speaker 1: it pays to try to reduce your toggling tax. So

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Speaker 1: how do you do that. If you are managing people,

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Speaker 1: it would be smart to see what you can do

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Speaker 1: as a team to limit interruptions and set expectations. Maybe

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Speaker 1: you agree not to send each other messages for a

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Speaker 1: few hours during the day unless it is absolutely urgent.

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Speaker 1: But even if you are just in charge of you,

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Speaker 1: awareness helps notice when you switch contexts and consider whether

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Speaker 1: the switch is truly necessary. In some cases, you may

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Speaker 1: be able to postpone and batch some of your switches.

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Speaker 1: For instance, if you are working on a report and

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Speaker 1: need to incorporate content from another source, just put the

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Speaker 1: content you need in brackets such as number of sites

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Speaker 1: in twenty twenty four number of sites in twenty fourteen,

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Speaker 1: and highlight it so you can see it, or you

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Speaker 1: can use the publishing abbreviation t K for to come

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Speaker 1: as a placeholder. Then when you go to the app

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Speaker 1: that will provide the information you need, you can scan

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Speaker 1: through the document, collect all the information you need at once,

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Speaker 1: and enter it in the places where it belongs. I

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Speaker 1: also recommend minimizing apps you don't need and turning off notifications.

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Speaker 1: Out of sight is out of mind, So if you

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Speaker 1: don't know you have email, Slack teams or text messages,

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Speaker 1: you won't be tempted to switch over and process them.

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Speaker 1: Even if your workplace does expect a quick response, you

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Speaker 1: can probably be unplugged for at least a half hour

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Speaker 1: between message checks. That might eliminate a dozen or more toggles.

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Speaker 1: This time of year, no one needs a reminder that

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Speaker 1: there are some taxes we have to pay, but the

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Speaker 1: toggling tax is not one of them. Or if we

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Speaker 1: do have to switch contexts, at least we have some

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Speaker 1: control over our toggling tax rate. If you can reduce

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Speaker 1: your toggling tax by half, you may be able to

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Speaker 1: free up a couple of hours a week for your

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Speaker 1: most important work or for doing something besides work. Either

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Speaker 1: of those sounds like a welcome tax break to me.

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Speaker 1: In the meantime, this is Laura, Thanks for listening, and

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Speaker 1: here's to making the most of our our time. Thanks

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Speaker 1: for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas,

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Speaker 1: or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura

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Speaker 1: vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.

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Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app,

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Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,