<story><title>How (and Why) to Stop Multitasking</title><url>http://blogs.hbr.org/bregman/2010/05/how-and-why-to-stop-multitaski.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>kscaldef</author><text>I think it&apos;s more interesting to look at what the crossing point is where it becomes useful to multitask.&lt;p&gt;Surely, when on hold with some company listening to &quot;your call is valuable to us; please do not hang up; the expected wait time is 45 minutes&quot; he wouldn&apos;t advise to just be on the phone.&lt;p&gt;When I need to run a 5 minute test suite before checking in some code, should I go read my email while I wait? What if it&apos;s 30 seconds instead?&lt;p&gt;Where is that point where switching to another task is the right thing to do?</text></comment>
<story><title>How (and Why) to Stop Multitasking</title><url>http://blogs.hbr.org/bregman/2010/05/how-and-why-to-stop-multitaski.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>kristiandupont</author><text>I&apos;ve made a pomodoro timer app that also gives me a summary over which apps and websites I have used during the last 25 minutes when a pomodoro is over. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.beatpoints.com/cherrytomato&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.beatpoints.com/cherrytomato&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;p&gt;This is good feedback about whether I actually managed to focus on the task that I planned.&lt;p&gt;However, I find that pomodoros are not the right granularity - to really be productive, I need to focus on one task for an entire day (related: pg&apos;s Maker&apos;s Schedule, Manager&apos;s Schedule: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html&lt;/a&gt;). This is still really hard for me to do.</text></comment>