Why Context Switching is Draining You

hi everyone welcome back to ever growing this is a show talking about inner growth for leaders and by leaders I don't just mean leaders in the traditional sense in the corporate world I mean leaders like everyday you and me I think we can really take a pability of our actions and our leadership to be a leader in our families a leader in our relationships and a leader in the projects that we do that we love so really what I do is I bring Transformations and wisdom and things that I'm thinking about as uh my daily life as an executive coach and entrepreneur and I want to make that accessible to you so today I want to talk about contact switching lately a lot of CEOs come to coaching sessions talking about how it's really really hard to contact switch now this doesn't just affect CEOs while I talk to CEOs the most in my coaching practice at the moment so the examples that they gave me are hey I'm in an investor call then I have to go into sales mode then I have to go have oneon-one with someone that is just really really hard because I'm in backtack meetings and then once I'm done with meetings I am so tired and drained that I don't want to do that dock or that strategy dock or that Focus time work that I plan to do so then I push it off and then I start off the next day feeling defeated and tired and I do it all over again that's the CEO example I hear this from coaches as well coaches will say I'm in coaching sessions I'm so in the flow but then I need to write content that makes me feel very vulnerable and I I feel like I'm forcing myself to say something and then I have to go into a sales call and I'm really scared but I don't know what to say and then I have to do accounting and there's a lot of things that I need to do I get it I think it's really really really hard to do many things at the same time at some point our society has promoted the idea of multitasking like look at that person they're great at multitasking and even sometimes it's like a qualification that you can see on job postings as something to be preferred because it just means that this person is really productive and productivity is good because that's how it works at least in America and a lot in the rest of the world too well multitasking turns out is not very good for you there is some research out there talking about how multitasking and I believe this research was about like trying to read emails at the same time as a meeting I might be misquoting is so please fact checked me and that was Raising someone's blood pressure and heart rate so multi asking is really not good for us and there's a lot of science behind it on how it's affecting our physical body and as you know when our physical body doesn't feel good we have worse decision-making capacities we have less empathy we our temper is shorter and we're just tired right so why is contact switching so hard here are the four reasons why contact switching is so hard mental burnout physical burnout emotional burnout and spiritual burnout so what is a mental burnout mental burnout is when we literally cram so much information into our brains and we were're full our our brain is in some ways kind of like a computer the CPU is at 99% it's going to get a little bit slower so when this happens is probably when you are in backtack meetings and the meeting is really heavy informational load and when you're arriving at that next meeting that's an investor meeting and you're supposed to kind of spin it off you're just out of thoughts and you're exhausted the second physical burn out maybe you haven't been sleeping maybe you haven't been eating enough maybe you haven't done the workout that really brings you energy maybe you haven't seen a sun today haven't moved your body in a way that feels good maybe at least this happens to me a lot sometimes I Rush my lunch break and then I eat really really quickly and in a way I was arriving at physical burnout for some of my meetings because it just feels like I am not digesting my lunch yet and I'm still in a very slumpy mode and it didn't take the full break emotional burnout well this could happen when you just had a series of very emotional life events or work meetings and then you know the next thing you're out of juice you maybe feeling something that's an intense sensation inside of you and instead of dealing with that on your own you just move forward with your day that's kind of like emotional debt it'll carry into each thing that you do next and affect your ability to be present with that next thing so that could feel very heavy and that could just feel like you don't have enough juice to give in a moment and then there's spiritual burnout what is spiritual burnout that's a little bit harder to Define but I almost think of it as like energizing versus not energizing in the simplest form but really is this something that is that deeply fulfills you that deeply satisfies you or is this something that really drains your life force and your energy and you're not really wanting to do it now let's be realistic we can't all do things that we love it's just not how it works to be a human so in order to live a realistic life we have to do things that we don't like but the proportion and the Order of things that we do the things that we do like and is deeply satisfying to us is really important otherwise we'll arrive at spiritual burnout how do we solve each of those categories there are some solutions that will solve multiple categories at at once but I'll go through the categories one by one again and talk about some solutions so mental burnout if you are finding yourself in mental burnout the best thing to do is actually move your body recharge yourself with energy and this is is taking a break going for a walk going outside and just letting your your brain start to slow down meditation is a great one breathing exercise is a great one sinking up with your body and I know we've all had the sensation of where our thoughts are way too fast and and we feel like we're living outside of our body and it's spinning spinning and we're just not in touch with the present moment at all so got to intervene to slow that down and it will make contact switching easier even if it means it pushes your next meeting by a little bit physical per out it's really about solving for what is the physical cue that I need at this moment and giving myself that checking in with your body throughout the day do I need food do I need water do I need to stand up do am I cold am I hot do I need this do I need that that's sending your body a signal that you have awareness and you want to take your body along for the ride and you're not just using your body as a tool to get to wherever you want nobody likes getting used and everybody likes to to be cared for and attuned to so really doing these body scans and checking with your body will help with that physical burnout with the emotional burnout it's also has something to do with taking a break if you feel your emotional load is increasing whether it's a really hard thing or sometimes it's a very exciting thing usually a good idea to take a step take a pause and really let yourself feel the emotion now there's a Harvard study um about something along the lines of if you really feel your emotions for 90 seconds it'll typically go away now the most important thing is to not go into contact with the emotion with the objective to make it go away or judge it or resent it or want it to go away when you go in with that type of force it will ultimately make a snowball so the key is to genuinely authentically earnestly be with yourself in that moment and feel what you feel and give yourself permission to feel in that moment spiritual burnout now to solve for this you really have to have an embodied sensation of what satisfaction feels like now some people say I have no idea sometimes it's very hard for me to tell what energizes me or what doesn't energize me you can see if it lights you up you can see if you're in flow you can see that if you have more energy or less energy after doing something those are good ways to measure that and once you have like a embodied sensation of what satisfaction feels like you can rearrange things that gives you that positive sensation to do maybe first thing in the morning or prioritize that so then the excess of that energy flows into things that you don't want to do sometimes people like it to say hey I'm going to do these hard things right now knowing I've left myself a really nice treat I get to do this later in the day for most people I would say at least anecdotally for the people that I coach the first strategy Works a little bit better because if you start with the things that drain you sometimes you're scraping the bottom of the barrel already and when it comes to izing thing it's really hard to bring it up all of that will help you get a better idea of contest switching and if you're listening you'll see that there's Common Thread among all of the solutions which is contact switching is hard when you don't allow yourself to be connected within yourself and you don't fill up your own cup the opposite of contact switching is I think writing the flow of your day which means noticing when you're dipping in energy and when you're dipping in focus and attention and knowing knowing how to bring it up and then dipping again and you knowing how to bring it up it is not brute forcing throughout your day until you're exhausted so General ideas of taking breaks making your body feels good feeling your emotions and prioritizing things that energize you all of that will be able to help now with all of that there's still the idea of believing in oneself and having confidence and self assuredness because what happens with contact switching that makes it hard in addition to those burning out is fear and doubt and shame and I can't do this or this is hard if you have a relationship and an attitude with life where it's like I have a lot of Grace for myself I know that I make mistakes and if I make mistakes I got my back and even though this is a big project even though this is a big meeting even though this is a big moment it's going to be okay I'm going to be okay because I know me and I've got me I think that's like the general attitude that I found helps me contact switch and helps me do a lot of things effortlessly and on my most relaxed days sometimes produce the most amount of results out of nowhere because I'm so in the flow of my day I'm watching my attention I'm watching my physical health and I feel like everything is going to be okay and I feel confident Within Myself of course all of these things are a lifelong practice I fail a lot I sometimes forget one of those categories and it's totally normal it's totally okay having these guidelines it's almost like having different checkpoints you don't need to check all of the boxes but just know that these are lists of things that you can run through into to your best ability in that moment check as many boxes that you can that will really really help you contact switch and live your day with more ease more Flo and more confidence if you have any questions or comments about what I said please feel free to reach out I'd love to hear from you and if you're interested in learning more and digging deeper I am planning a series of events where I go deeper on some of these Concepts and it's very much in development right now so I'd love to hear from you if you're interested I'll share a little bit more privately thank you for listening