Context switching tax — when to talk and when to write

Peter: “Can you help me with blahblahblah?”
Mary: “Sure.”
Peter: “Hm, never mind. In fact, I just figured it out.”

…and there goes half an hour of Mary’s productivity.

Even though it only takes a couple of seconds, interrupting someone takes way more of person’s time. It’s easy to lose focus and it takes time to get it back.

In Axilis, we prefer written communication. Primarily because reading IM/mail can be avoided when you don’t want to be disturbed and secondly, the person contacting you will think more about what she needs.

Writing stuff down takes time and it can serve as a rubber duck to resolve your issues even before you press “send”. When writing stuff down, you need to think more about your problem than when you just want to say it. You wouldn’t write a sentence like “You know, I was just thinking about… in fact, I just realized — not about that in particular, but… “. When you talk, sentences like that one are common. They are essentially noise which requires the listener to concentrate in order to extract the real message.

Avoid doing that. When you need something, write it down — it won’t distract your teammate, it will make sure you think through the issue and think about how to present it in a concise and understandable way.

We’re humans and we forget stuff. If you do have a longer verbal discussion, you should want to prepare the points of discussion beforehand and write down a discussion summary afterwards. Why talking and writing the same stuff down afterwards if you could have written it immediately?

I am not saying we shouldn’t talk to people, but in a workplace, written communication is more efficient in a lot of cases. And when discussions do happen, they should be meaningful, structured and their conclusions documented.

Original post: http://www.axilis.com/2016/01/04/context-switching-tax/