You leave a difficult personnel discussion and enter a pricing meeting two minutes later. Part of your attention is still on the first conversation. The second meeting begins before you have reconstructed its question.
Sophie Leroy's work on attention residue offers a useful way to consider this cost of switching between unfinished tasks.
Leave a usable stopping point
Before changing tasks, record the current position, the next action and who owns it. The note should let you return without replaying the entire conversation.
Where possible, finish a coherent part of the work before switching. A complete decision brief is a better stopping point than six half-read documents.
Build preparation time into consequential meetings. Participants should know the question in advance and have a chance to read the evidence, rather than using the first half of the meeting to recover context.
Look at the transitions, not only the meetings
Review a day with frequent switches. Which were necessary? Which occurred because a decision had no owner or a message was treated as urgent without a reason?
Try grouping related discussions or reducing one recurring source of interruption. Track whether decisions are easier to finish and whether fewer issues remain open at the end of the day.
The purpose is to make transitions manageable. Executive work will still involve interruptions; a useful arrangement gives people a way to resume the work those interruptions leave behind.
