What context switching really is

More generally, when you switch between a Plan A and a Plan B, momentum shifts from one bundle of possible worlds, to another. This is rarely a matter of turning one switch off and another one on. The clean fork-in-the-road shift is the exception; the dissipation of momentum associated with one course of action, and the cohering of another, is the rule.

Venkatesh Rao, Tempo

We talk about “context switching” as this thing to be avoided for knowledge workers and creative people, because it ruins concentration. But we don’t really give it any color, or any depth–just this thing to not do unless there’s a fire.

The best way to understand is to experience directly, and deliberately, so you’re prepared to observe instead of just to go with the flow.

Try reading this passage in a single go:

A civilization known as “Type I” has achieved a technological level close to the one attained on earth at the time Kardashev’s article was submitted (December 1963), with a rate of energy consumption evaluated at about 4 x 10^12 watts (W). A civilization known as “Type II” would surpass the first by fourteen orders of magnitude, matching the entire power emitted by the Sun in about 3,200 years, i.e, our home star’s “output“ at that time, predicted at 4 × 10^26 W. Finally, a civilization known as “Type III” reaches the milepost set in 5,800 years when humanity’s rate of energy consumption is predicted by the author to match the power emitted by the approximated 1011 stars in our home galaxy, the Milky Way, which involves harnessing power of up to an estimated 4 x 10^37 W.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale#First_publication_(1964)

Do you feel the comprehension building, the mental model of the subject matter starting to fit together?

Hold that thought. And let’s jam out.

Okay, quick! What were we thinking about? How big were the magnitudes involved? Shit, was it three categories or five? How many years out were we estimating for that big one?

As you’re considering–what even was the name of the song that was just playing?

This is contrived, and we did it in about three minutes. Now imagine you’d been trying to chew on a full page of material. Or an hour’s reading and writing.

We changed subjects and media and tempo and timbre and might’ve given you a bit of attention whiplash. You don’t get to just drop context on the floor; as fast as the change of subject took, it took your brain and your pattern of attention some time to shift into that bizarro song. The momentum took time to shift–and once it had, it was hard to go back.

We’re skipping a lot of nuance, but this is the core.