Task Transition Period Between Tasks
Insert a deliberate transition gap between task A and task B to improve task switching. Even 10-15 seconds helps; commonly 60-90 seconds to 2 minutes, and up to 5-10 minutes if the prior task involved deep focus. If only a very short transition is available, explicitly recognize it as transition time and count from 10 to 1 or 1 to 10.
“One of the best things that we can do to support our ability to task switch that's nicely supported both at the mechanistic level and at the practical level within the published literature is to introduce short transition gaps between the activities that we're trying to switch between. Even the introduction of an arbitrary but very short transition period of say 15 seconds where you know that you're introducing 15 seconds of transition and you designate it as transition will allow you to engage in a more efficient and more complete level of task execution on task B.”