Switching

Switching between different tasks is expensive. In our modern world where transportation (and thus transportation between different tasks), there is an illusion that we have cut these costs, thus making switching frequently viable.

Analyzing work from an instrumental standpoint in this way ignores that work bears a particular mark of man and of humanity (as JPII says). What does high-switching work do to a person?

St. Theophan the Recluse writes in The Path to Salvation:

Do not run quickly from one thought to another. This will sooner scatter your thoughts than gather them and influence the soul. The sun would not warm even one creature on earth if it were to run across it instantly. May the measure of reasoning about one thing or another be sympathy. Bring every thought into feeling and do not let it go until it penetrates the heart.

Work, too, should penetrate the heart of man. When man is immersed in a work for an extended period of time, it affects him and draws him into something.

When jostling about from thing to thing (or into work and out of it), you are deprived of the possibility for contemplation in work.

Fight this, and create stillness in your work today.

Turn off notifications - those things that pull you away from depth in work over banal things. Make set times for when you're going to check something.

If you're going to do something, do all of it. If you have to cut lumber for a project, cut all the lumber. If you have to stain, do all the staining. Not only will this enable deeper contemplation and appreciation of your work, this will reduce the time spent on those hidden switching costs of moving around and cleaning up.