Switching costs between different kinds of work can be significant. Give yourself permission to focus entirely on one kind of work per Schelling unit of time (per day), if that would help. Don’t spend cognitive cycles feeling guilty about letting some projects sit on the backburner; the point is to get where you’re going as quickly as possible, not to look like you’re juggling a lot of projects at once.
This can be hard, because there’s a conventional social expectation that you’ll juggle a lot of projects simultaneously, maybe because that’s more legible to your peers and managers. If you have something to protect, though, keep your eye squarely on the ball and optimize for EV, not directly for legible appearances.
Switching costs between different kinds of work can be significant. Give yourself permission to focus entirely on one kind of work per Schelling unit of time (per day), if that would help. Don’t spend cognitive cycles feeling guilty about letting some projects sit on the backburner; the point is to get where you’re going as quickly as possible, not to look like you’re juggling a lot of projects at once.
This can be hard, because there’s a conventional social expectation that you’ll juggle a lot of projects simultaneously, maybe because that’s more legible to your peers and managers. If you have something to protect, though, keep your eye squarely on the ball and optimize for EV, not directly for legible appearances.