RCS (Rapid Context Switching) without going insane!
If you are a C Level executive, does this sound familiar? One moment you are in a client meeting telling them about product features to the next when you are having an investor conversation and planning the future of the company on the 2–3 year horizon. Your brain has under 15 minutes to go from a very detail oriented conversation to something that requires one to put their 50,000 feet view hat on. Imagine this happening everyday and 10 times a day.
This is different from the good old multi-tasking which has hazards of its own. This one is as bad if not more. I call this RCS or Rapid Context Switching and this can be very exhausting. When your meetings are getting scheduled, there is no easy way to put them in any sort of logical order (e.g. Mondays — tactical stuff, Tuesdays — high level strategic product thinking etc.) leaving you with no choice but to change the way you are thinking on almost an hourly basis. It leaves me and I’m sure a lot of my peers feeling exhausted.
Below are some of the things that I have personally found useful in similar situations and making sure at the end of the day, I have a feeling of accomplishment rather than of fatigue.
- If possible, start the day where the first 60–90 minutes are for your own contemplation and not for your co-workers. Hitting the ground running is a good proverb but when it is literally used everyday, it is not fun.
- Scan your calendar a couple of times the previous night. This will help you mentally prepare when these context switches will have to happen during your day and make them slightly less ‘rapid’.
- I understand it is a bit cliché but 10 minutes of meditation a day helps to keep the focus.
- Always remember to keep the cool and smile. Being overwhelmed can wear you down but seeing you like that wears people around you down even more.
- Sometimes just being ok with the fact that every decision that you make doesn’t need to be optimal. Hindsight is always 20/20.
About Tanuj Joshi: Tanuj has been leading product and technology teams for the last decade in cutting edge advertising technology firms which include Criteo, Integral Ad Science and MediaMath. He is passionate about simplifying design and technology for making complex softwares accessible to the everyday user. As Eulerity’s CEO, Tanuj is now realizing this vision by making marketing technology usable without a manual at an affordable price.
About Eulerity: Created in 2018, Eulerity is a powerful, app-based digital marketing platform that puts the best local business marketing tools in the hands of franchisor brands and their franchisees. Using machine learning and automation, Eulerity’s state-of-the-art technology simplifies the complex world of developing and executing digital marketing programs — all for a flat and transparent fee — a fraction of the cost of traditional vendors. Visit http://www.eulerity.com to learn more.
