Over the last two years and a bit more, I have had to work on more things that were significantly different from each other than before. And I have come to experience the real toll that the mind suffers when context switching.

It’s one thing to be absorbed in work all day and feel tired in the evening. But when that work is not of the same “type”, it can be even more mentally draining. Let me illustrate what I mean by this.

Let’s say that your daily routine, whether it is a 9 to 5 job, or any kind, involves you doing work in that time period. If you are working on the same “kind” of work – coding, designing, writing, speaking whatever – as long as you stick to it, you don’t often have to make a significant mental switch. You will still need to take breaks, rest and get back to what you were doing, but you will still be resuming the same context when you do.

But when the type of work you return to is different, or you have to switch between different types of work frequently, that switching can take a slight toll on the mind every time, and it can add up to a lot on top of the usual weariness by the end of the day.

For example, in the last two to three years, I have had to spend a lot of time on each of the following tasks at least once, almost every single day:

  • Learning about various new topics in data science and progressing to Machine Learning, Deep Learning and LLMs
  • Reinforcing fundamental statistics and math concepts
  • Doing coursework for my Master’s programme – homework assignments and assessment requirements, as well as the final Master’s thesis project.
  • Coding – this is part of coursework but it exercises a different part of my brain compared to other types of assignments like researching and reading.
  • Writing – this includes spending time thinking and putting those thoughts into words
  • Dealing with German bureaucracy and visa logistics
  • Learning German – this started off with Duolingo in 2020, then progressed to in-person classes at my university, reading textbooks and tests myself and finding language partners to practice speaking
  • Work – I also had internships and part-time work with a tech company in Bremen, as part of which I had to attend meetings, work on product and code.
  • Sideprojects – simple ideas for coding and data science projects that are not part of coursework or work, for which I had to get inspired, think of ideas and research before testing and implementing in code

Almost all of these exercise a different muscle in the brain and I found it hard to switch between one to the other.

Some simple “mental tools” that I found helpful at some points (I’ll be honest, it’s always a struggle and they don’t work every time) are as follows:

  • Pomodoro timer: I set a timer on https://pomofocus.io/ for a session (initially, 25 minutes, then I bumped it to 30 and eventually 1 hour). Not so much for focusing on a task as most people do, but to have that psychological nudge to keep at something. I don’t always stick to finishing a session but it’s some kind of small, atomic, extrinsic motivation to see the time go by as I work no something. And it also helps seeing how much time I have spent in total at the end of the day on various tasks.
  • Telling myself that I only need to finish a small, tiny step: So often, I have tried to get started on a new task after switching from another one of a different context, and got stuck trying to find the dopamine boost. The slight bit of unfamiliarity in the new task, or memories of being stuck on the last problem in that task or other frictions or the effort to try and recall where exactly I was have led to me spending minutes trying to force myself to focus but failing. In times like these, sometimes I have managed to overcome this block by telling myself that I only need to go to the last line of the code or write-up and make one minor incremental progress. As I do this, my focus slowly begins to grow and I end up spending more time and making more progress.
  • Power naps: I have found immense value in taking a power nap in the middle of the day. I realised that my lack of motivation and focus started around the middle of the day, after I had spent a lot of time thinking in the morning. By around noon my brain is often cluttered with various thoughts, confusing ideas and distractions. A power nap helps cleanse it and declutter the cobwebs so to speak, almost deleting memories, concerns and irrelevant thoughts, or a kind of factory reset.
  • Long walks/runs: At the end of the day, I am usually grumpy and exhausted but only mentally. Physically though, I am usually craving for some movement. I have found that just getting out and going for walks (during which I also do short sprints) helps me clear my mind a little. I am not always trying to do any cleansing but the opposite – I just let my mind wander off wherever it wants to go. I don’t practice mindfulness or meditation but I have heard some people talk about “walking meditation” and I have a feeling this might be what I am doing, without realising it. Anyway, once I return from the walk, I am usually feeling much better, my mind is a little cleared up and the well-known endorphin high is also working its thing – all of which together make it easier to get back into doing something productive.