The Hidden Cost of Task Switching

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Hey CS Psychos, Rachel Provan here and today we're going to be talking about task switching. What it is, why it's a huge problem in customer success and what you can do to try and avoid it some of the time. That's all coming up next right here on Psychology of Customer Success. 

Stay tuned. Humans don't think or behave like computers. You can't just run a command and get them to do what you want them to do. 

So why are you still basing your CS strategy based solely on logic? I'm Rachel Provan, CS leadership coach, award-winning CS strategist, and certified psych nerd. I teach CS leaders how to build and scale world-class CS departments using a combination of strategy, leadership, and mindset using my secret weapon, psychology. Come join me every Wednesday for Psychology of Customer Success where we'll dive into why people do the things they do, what motivates them, and the effect that has on your CS strategy, team dynamics, and executive presence. 

Make sure to subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And make sure to share it with your CS bestie. Talk soon and here's to your success.

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All right, welcome back. I'm very excited to talk about today's topic. 

I'm very passionate about it. I get people all riled up with it and that's because it's something where there's an ideal world, an ideal way that we would behave and we would do things to get the most done and be the most relaxed, happy, productive people in the world. And then there's the real world, the reality that we're living in where that's just not possible a lot of the time. 

What can we do about this? We can try and create pockets of focused work. I talk about this a lot in Customer Success Leadership Academy. There isn't going to be something where we're magically going to wake up and be able to prioritize perfectly and be able to separate the urgent from the important and only work on the big brain important work. 

But I think in order for us to move away from really the addiction we have to task switching and the expected way of working is to understand really the consequences. Most of the time, we do not understand that there are consequences to the status quo. The way we're working now, it feels like it's working because nothing disastrous has happened yet. 

And that doesn't mean that it won't. Not to be Debbie Downer or anything, but there are what I like to call invisible consequences. Doing things exactly the way you have been, maybe it'll lead to the same results you've always gotten. 

But if there is sort of a flaw in there, it doesn't tend to remain static. It tends to widen like a crack. To understand what's going on with multitasking, just first of all, what is it? Multitasking is when you are switching from one task to the next, where you have to switch your focus away from something that's maybe more deep work, like you recording this podcast takes a lot of focus. 

You maybe are analyzing some of the data of your clients right now, looking at some of the adoption data, the usage data, trying to figure out what it means, trying to spot patterns, trying to figure out ways to motivate your team better, come up with better ideas, build playbooks, anything that is strategic that is really going to impact long term and overall. Switching between things like that and perhaps lower value tasks, which would be responding to emails, looking things up, filing things, entering things into a CRM. All these things have to be done. 

They're gonna be a mess if you don't. But we're in a situation in offices, in corporate culture, if you work with a computer at all, you are in a situation where you are put in a very reactive place, because we have all these beeps and boops and notifications that are designed to take our attention. Okay, so that's just the way of the world, right? That's the modern workforce. 

Well, here's why that's a problem. These things have consequences. So multitasking and IQ, going back and forth between one tab where you're trying to do strategic work, your email, your Slack, going to meetings, switching around all day long the way most of us do, that tends to equate to about a 10 IQ point drop. 

Is that a lot? That's the same effect as smoking quite a bit of pot. And I'd imagine the one is more fun than the other. I don't want to be that impaired just by working so much. 

But you can probably feel how this can be true. It's the reason that at the end of the day, when you've been sitting in front of your computer the whole day, you haven't moved, you haven't gotten lunch, you haven't gotten up to walk around the block, even though you know you should. It's the reason that you can end the day and be like, I'm absolutely exhausted. 

Why am I so exhausted? I didn't really get anything done. I didn't move all day. So why am I so freaking tired? Every time you context switch like this, every time you switch between tasks, between tabs, anytime you're switching between those things, you are using up energy in your brain. 

It is using up calories. Sadly, not using calories in the way that would be the same as going to the gym, but it uses up a lot of energy. And it uses up energy in the same way that you can think about a computer. 

Your brain has some similarities. I'm not great with the details of CPU versus RAM versus all of that. But even I know that running with too many tabs open, running too many programs, it's going to slow your computer down. 

And eventually, you're just going to have to reset it because it's going to get laggy, things are going to get glitchy. And it's the same thing with your brain. You're adding and adding and adding. 

You're going to slow it down. There are some slight gender differences in this. It does affect men more than women. 

But that doesn't mean that it doesn't affect women. There has been this misconception that women are great multitaskers. Multitasking and task switching are similar. 

Multitasking might be trying to listen to music while trying to write an email. And for some people, that's really effective. And for some, it's not. 

But I'm really talking about moving from one thing to the next. Our brains are structurally different. It just tends to be maybe 10% more so for men.

(7:09 - 8:17)
So the impact on productivity. This is, again, why you would be feeling unproductive and exhausted at the end of the day. And it's shown that we can lose up to 40% productivity from this. 

So we could be accomplishing 40% more in a day. Not just doing 40% more stuff, but actually improving results by 40%. That's bananas how much more we could be improving things, increasing revenue, making things better for clients, and just feeling a little less insane. 

One of the things that I think is a huge culprit for this is both email and Slack. Slack is even worse because there's a sense that someone should see your Slack right away and they should respond to you right away. Now, if you let other people own your time like that, if they decide where your focus is, and they can just snap their fingers and you have to jump and change what you're doing, you're never going to be able to accomplish half of what you want to accomplish.

(8:18 - 9:11)
You do not owe anyone your time that way. Customer success is not customer support. Customer support does have SLAs attached because it is break-fix. 

If something is broken, it's not unreasonable for a customer to want someone to be there to get on it right away. There's a difference between getting on it right away and getting on it within a few hours. If you don't respond to a customer's email within a couple of hours, it is completely unreasonable if they are flipping out. 

That is not your role. They don't employ you. Your employer employs you. 

Your company employs you. And even within your company, you are hired to fulfill a role to get certain results. You having to jump whenever anyone else says jump is going to prevent you from getting those results.

(9:12 - 9:27)
The issue with email, and with Slack, with any of those things with notifications, and those badges with the colors on them, is they're actually addictive. We're all addicted to our phones. I am horribly so, and it's embarrassing.

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But whenever we see any of those little badges or dings, it's up. There's something I'm not doing. Somebody needs something. 

I might be letting someone down. What if it's a problem? Hey, what if I want a million dollars? What could that email be? I need to go check. I need to just make sure it's not an emergency.

(9:46 - 10:08)
I have Gmail. Whenever I see those parentheses and a number in there, there's some part of my brain is aware of it, and it's taking up space. But you still have a two in there. 

There are two emails. You haven't gotten to those two emails. What if they're important? And then you go look, and those emails make you think, oh, shoot, I have to go do this.

(10:08 - 10:13)
I have to go look this up for this client. It'll just take two minutes. I'll just do that.

(10:13 - 10:50)
But now you're off to another task, not even email. Now you're looking something up, but now you can't find it, and you're on to a third task. Whatever you were working on before, gone. 

We tend to have this idea that, oh, if I don't respond right away, I'm going to forget about it. But there are ways that you can mark things. There are ways that you can save things so that you don't have to respond immediately. 

Again, that is not your job. I'm talking about leaders right now, not CSMs. And even regular CSMs at a startup, you can take an hour a day.

(10:50 - 11:26)
You can take an hour a day of strategic time to look at your book of business and say, hey, what trends am I seeing? What am I noticing? Having the option to turn off your email, turn off your Slack for that one hour a day, it really makes a huge amount of difference. Now, the ideal is to be able to check your email two to three times a day to keep it closed the rest of the time. The reason for this is because batch tasking actually is incredibly more efficient and easier.

(11:26 - 11:51)
Every time you task switch, it takes about 20 minutes to get back into a focused state where you can really be productive. So anytime you're switching over to your email, you're switching over to your Slack, you are adding another 20 minutes to whatever you're trying to get done that day. If you think about how many times you switch, it's shocking that we get anything done.

(11:52 - 12:19)
So I do recommend batch tasking your email, even if it's four or five times a day, just find a way to close it or to not have notifications where you can see them. There is a way in Gmail to hide the notifications on the tab so that you don't see them until you open the tab. I find it a lot easier to close it and to silence my notifications, you know, just put myself on focus mode.

(12:19 - 12:30)
But again, you have to communicate with people about when you're going to do that. I have clients one day a week. They just say, I'm not here.

(12:30 - 12:33)
Nobody talked to me. I'm putting my head down. I'm getting some work done.

(12:33 - 12:45)
That's something that they have worked out with their employer. Others, you know, they answer their email four times a day. It really depends on what you can get away with where you are.

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But just sitting there and answering your email immediately, there are no prizes for this. No one is paying you the money you want to make because you are answering emails within five minutes. I'm willing to bet that was not on your job description, nor was answering slacks immediately.

(13:05 - 13:21)
The higher up you are and the more strategic you are, the less that should be your priority. So, yes, definitely batch tasking email, batch tasking slack. You can come back and see all of your badges.

(13:22 - 13:33)
What I like to do is sort them into, you know, I use Trello and I have an inbox to process. That means this needs to go somewhere. I need to do something with it, but not right now.

(13:34 - 13:50)
I'm busy and I don't need to handle it this second. So I have things that will go there. If it's slack messages where someone wants something from me, emails with tasks for me to do, or even just, hey, this is a piece of information I want to save for later.

(13:50 - 13:57)
I want to file it somewhere that I know where to get it. You know, some reference folders for myself. Fine.

(13:57 - 14:14)
It all goes there and I have time on my calendar for when I'm going to process those things. But one of the best things that you can do is figure out what works best for you in terms of your ideal day. It doesn't mean you're going to get it every day.

(14:14 - 14:21)
I'm not a morning person. Let me make that clear. I require massive amounts of weaponized caffeine to get me going in the morning.

(14:22 - 14:34)
That being said, I still do my best work two, three hours after I've woken up. It's still in the morning. And that's because it's before the day has had a chance to seize me.

(14:34 - 14:55)
I would love to get up and seize the day, but more often than not, the day seizes me and just takes me like the sea. It's that whole thing of like working out before your day happens because something is going to happen to get in the way. Whenever you can, I highly recommend not scheduling meetings during the first half of the day.

(14:56 - 15:02)
Not living in your inbox the first half of the day. Check it when you come in. There's no way you're not going to.

(15:02 - 15:08)
Process things. You can respond to people saying, Got this. I will get it back to you as soon as possible.

(15:08 - 15:19)
Giving them some sort of a time frame or saying, I'm on this. Talk soon. And you can leave it there in your inbox with like a little signifier that you need to do something about this.

(15:19 - 15:27)
I use a flagging system with Gmail. You can put those tags on it. I'll just say needs response to do waiting for.

(15:27 - 15:42)
I'll have these tags on it. So I know the context of what's in there, but that I've gotten back to everyone, but what needs next steps. I got this context recently that your email inbox is someone else's to-do list that they're trying to put on your plate.

(15:42 - 15:49)
And I find that to be very true. Process that. Then switch to an hour or two of focused work.

(15:49 - 16:06)
This is preferably not meetings. This is preferably strategy. Whatever strategic initiative you have that you're trying to move the needle forward on NRR or on creating processes that allow you to move more quickly, optimize them.

(16:07 - 16:29)
Any of those things that are building a better mousetrap, as I like to call it, improving processes or helping customers achieve their desired outcome, understanding what data ties to upsells, all those things really good to do in the morning while you still have your brain power. Because the fact is, you are going to be switching things. Your team is going to need you.

(16:30 - 16:36)
Other departments are going to need you. The CS team, it's important. We touch every part of the company.

(16:37 - 16:53)
And so our attention is constantly going to be pulled in multiple directions. So that's why I highly recommend first part of the day is for that strategic work, that deep work. And then the rest of the day, take the things that are being thrown at you.

(16:53 - 17:01)
I understand this is not a world in which we can step back and just be like, no, no, I am a leader. I am on high. I don't do those peasanty things.

(17:02 - 17:14)
No, it's just you have to carve out your time first. I know that I hammer this into the ground a lot, but it really does make a difference whether you're task switching during that time or not. It can seem harmless.

(17:14 - 17:35)
But those 20 minutes of your one hour a day that you're spending on this, that you lose just because you wanted to check an email. Man, that is not worth it. Something else that you can do here, and I have trouble acting on this myself, because again, addicted to my phone, you can switch to Grayscale.

(17:35 - 17:54)
And what that does is it reduces the dopamine hit you get from notification badges. Those shiny red badges, they make us feel needed. There's a reason that we like them, that we want to see them, that we're checking our social media and checking likes and checking emails.

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And it's good to feel needed. Red is going to draw our attention, and it's going to be very hard to resist. Switching it to Grayscale, whether it's on your computer, your phone, that will really reduce that temptation to hop around between those apps.

(18:11 - 18:35)
Another thing, this is like a secret weapon of mine, is I use an app called Brain.fm. What it does is it gives you music that helps you focus. It helps you get into that flow state, that kind of hyper-focused state, where you're really concentrating, you're getting great work done pretty quickly, you lose track of time. It's somewhat similar to a state of hypnosis.

(18:36 - 19:01)
It's really just very relaxed and focused, and you're able to get your best work done. It identifies the optimal hertz range for a given mental state. The hertz ranges are delta brainwaves, which is deep sleep, beta, deep relaxation, alpha, which is relaxed, wakeful, creative, and beta, which is where you're actively thinking, you're problem-solving, you're focused.

(19:02 - 19:19)
They have different options where you can do deep work, focused work, meditation, creative thinking, and it will change based on what you're trying to achieve. It's really pretty amazing. When I remember to put it on, I've gotten at least 20, 30% more work done.

(19:19 - 19:25)
It really does help increase focus. I am not paid for this at all. They have no idea who I am.

(19:25 - 19:42)
I have just found it to be an incredibly useful tool. And especially if you're working in an open office plan, this can be incredibly helpful to drown out all the extra distractions. Just like with taking a strategic hour, all you need to do here is align with your employer.

(19:42 - 20:07)
Whoever is your boss, talk to them, say, hey, I'm finding that I am not getting as much done because I'm getting so much email and I keep hopping in and out of there and it's preventing me from getting real productive focused work done. So with your permission, I would like to be able to close that for a couple hours at a time during the day. Of course, be checking it throughout the day, but just not having it open constantly.

(20:08 - 20:30)
Would you see that as an issue? And if so, let's talk about the ways in which it could be an issue and if there's anything we could do to mitigate that. The initial response is typically like, of course you have to have your email open all day long. But has anyone really thought about why? You need a system for how they can get in touch with you in an emergency and clarity on what is an emergency.

(20:31 - 20:45)
But it shouldn't just be that your brain space is up for grabs. The other thing that you can do is you can limit the amount of time or the time during the day that people can meet with you. Now I know not everyone has this option.

(20:46 - 21:13)
If you are working with groups overseas and you have to collaborate and your time only overlaps in certain parts of the days, like if you're working with Europe and you have to meet with them in the morning, that's gonna be how it is. But if you do have the option, try and manipulate your Calendly or whatever tool you use so that your available meeting hours are in the afternoon. Really easy hack.

(21:13 - 21:22)
I don't make it so that I'm available for meetings before 12 o'clock because I'm working. The rest of the day, yeah, I'm responding to emails. I'm in meetings.

(21:23 - 21:25)
I'm coaching. I'm teaching. I'm on podcasts.

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I'm hopping all over the place. But on days where I don't do this, I barely get anything done. I'm very, very busy.

(21:34 - 21:51)
I'm very, very tired. But I track my time and what I'm accomplishing and whether that is tracking towards my goals. And if I have those days where I just hope that I'm going to accomplish things in between meetings, it just doesn't end up happening.

(21:51 - 22:07)
So I highly recommend that you give that a try, putting kind of all your meetings together in one place and your focused work in another. Having scheduled times where you check your email. Also, if you think about it, the assembly line works for a reason.

(22:08 - 22:35)
Doing like tasks, going through your email inbox and processing 20 emails is very different than stopping and responding to 20 emails 20 times a day. And the best part of this is you might find that somebody else who's not as productive as you or focused as you has come and responded to some of those emails because you're often not the only one on them or the person has figured it out themselves. And voila, it is now not your job to do.

(22:35 - 22:45)
That doesn't mean you weren't doing your job. It just means somebody else didn't feel like Googling something and they wanted you to do it instead. So extra benefit there.

(22:45 - 22:58)
Give this a shot in leadership roles. It really is important to have that strategic focus. I do also highly recommend tracking what you're working on for two weeks, writing down this is how I spent this hour.

(22:58 - 23:23)
What was I working on? And was it a $10 an hour task, a $100 an hour task or a $500 an hour task? And you can figure that out by if I had to hire a contractor to do this for me, what could I pay them? You know, answer emails. You can pay someone $10 an hour overseas to do that for you. Not that you can do this for your company, but it's just an exercise looking at the value of how you're spending your time.

(23:24 - 23:35)
And any of the things that are lower value tasks, you can look at and consider dadding it. I call it dad it. Delegate, automate, delete.

(23:35 - 23:57)
Try and find systems and processes to do that so that you can spend more time on your focused work and not spend your day like a both exhausted, manic, stoned person because that's probably not getting your best work done. But that is what you are doing to your brain. So high focus work at the beginning of the day, meetings later.

(23:58 - 24:06)
Give it a try. Try it out for two non-consecutive days, maybe Tuesday, Thursday. Set yourself up to try this as an experiment.

(24:07 - 24:14)
It doesn't have to be I'm overhauling my entire life and you all will listen to me. Just try little experiments. It will feel weird.

(24:15 - 24:19)
It will feel scary. Do it anyway. That's what being brave is.

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That's how you discover better ways of doing things. Give it a shot. Tell me how you like it.

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Tell me if it made a difference for you, if you felt saner, if you had more energy later, and if you got more done. It's worth giving it a shot. And one more thing, if you don't happen to succeed at this every day of your life, that does not make you a failure.

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We're looking for progress, not perfection, people. All right. So that's all I've got for you today here on Psychology of Customer Success.

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If you liked this, make sure that you're following me on LinkedIn. You're signed up to my newsletter. That way you'll hear about what I've got coming up for you.

(24:59 - 25:32)
You won't miss anything because LinkedIn loves to hide people's content these days. If you want more help from me, you like what I have to say, check out the Customer Success Leadership Academy. That's where I teach people how to become excellent customer success leaders, teach them everything they need to know from time management, the nitty gritty stuff like this, to every single process you need to know, how to build a CS department from scratch, step by step, from a reactive miscellaneous department to a world-class growth engine.

(25:33 - 25:46)
And that will be opening back up in September, but get on the wait list now. Until then, take care, get some rest, and make sure to share this with your CS bestie. Talk soon, and here's to your success.