You today's episode, I'm going to be talking about your number one productivity killer, the thing that you may not even realize that you're doing, but it is absolutely killing your productivity and making you feel like your to do list is never ending. So if you're ready to get more productive, stop feeling overwhelmed by everything and learn what's killing your productivity. Let's jump on into this week's episode, y'all. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Serve Scale
Soar podcast. My name is Brandy Mouse. I am your host, and if you are a returning listener, welcome. Welcome back, my friend. I'm so glad you are tuning in. And if you are brand spanking new to the podcast, welcome. We are quickly going to become earbud BFFs. And so today's episode, I am going to talk about your number one productivity killer and what I have done to help improve my productivity by
paying attention to this one thing. And so, without being cryptic any longer, what is the number one thing killing your productivity? And it's not your kids. And so it is context switching. So what the heck is context switching and how is it affecting you? So the definition of context switching is when we shift our attention between different tasks, apps or projects, it's harmful to your work, making us less productive and more stressful. And so I'm going to read
that again. Context switching is when we shift our attention between different tasks, apps or projects. Now, you may be thinking, Brandy, this sounds like multitasking and it's not. They're a little bit different. And I want to distinguish this before we move into how we can fix it. So contact switching is when you're moving quickly between different apps task, and you're kind of like just switching where multitasking is when you're trying to work on
multiple things at the same time. So contact switching would be, let's say you are creating ads and you are working on setting up an ad campaign and then all of a sudden you get an email notification and you go check it, and then you get a Slack message and you go check that that's context switching. Now, multitasking is if you were trying to set up one person's ad account and then you went in and you were trying to also
create graphics for them and then you were also doing this. So you're working on multiple different aspects of a project or different projects at the same time. Another example that we can all probably be guilty of, of when we're talking about multitasking is when you're trying to be on a zoom meeting, but then you're also trying to work on something else that's multitasking that's a little bit different
than context switching. And the crazy thing is that a study, I read it in Forbes, a study showed that on average, we switch between nine plus apps per day if you work and then per month, we are spending 40 hours per month. So a whole work week context switching. And 56% of people who responded to the survey answer messages notifications immediately. So think about
how many times you've been in deep work. In deep work is like when we're really, really focused on one thing, and we're like it's when you feel like you're in flow and all of a sudden you get that ding and it's a slack message or ping and it's an email or it's a text message. Whatever it may be your context switching because you go see what that notification was.
You go check that email, you go respond, and then you're pulled out of flow, which means it takes a really long time for us to get back into that state of flow or for our brain to recalibrate. Because here's the thing. When we go from writing copy, let's say that, to checking an email, our brain has to switch to catch up with what's going on. And then you're asking your brain to come back and get back in here. Every time you do that, you're losing time. And that's where that 40 hours a
week in contact switching is coming up. Where this study showed that as employees and self employed people, we are wasting a whole work week per month contact switching. So when I heard this, it was last year, I was like, what the heck? I am so guilty of this. What are we going to do to change this? So we're not contact switching. So there's a few things that we can do so we don't contact switch first. It's identify when you catch yourself in those moments.
So what you're going to do is when you catch yourself in that moment, we first want to identify, am I multitasking or am I context switching? Because multitasking is another thing and it's so bad for your brain cells. I can go into a whole thing. I learned this in college and I try not to multitask since. But let's bring this back. If it's context switching,
what can we do right now that would have prevented that context switching? And I think it's important that we find our own habits and how to fix those. So for me now, when I'm in work mode, I put do not disturb on. And if you have a Mac, Apple or iPhone, all that, and you put Do Not Disturb on your phone, it does it on your computer and all that. So whenever I am in work mode, like recording this podcast, I put Do Not Disturb on. It keeps
all notifications at bay. I'm not going to get notified, which helps with distractions. I also make sure I don't have Slack or anything else up that may ping me. So slack is put away. I exit out of mail, all of that. Because I'm in deep work, I'm focused. So with that being said, that was because I noticed that every time I got like a text or a ding or something like that. I was like, dang. So I have it set to do not
disturb. And if you're like, but I'm a parent. What if the school calls? You can actually have settings where if a certain number calls, so if Austin calls me, then it actually comes through. So you can set that up on your phone. Your computer takes a hot second to do, and then it's set and done. So when you find yourself contact switching and you make an effort to be like, oh, this is what I'm doing. What calls that? And now let's create a system for that. So I want to go through some
common scenarios of when this happens. One, the Do Not Disturb is like ideal because then it helps really set the tone for your work. And so that's the number one. The number two is I've talked about this before is setting up work times. So for me, if I'm recording a podcast, I know that's going to take about 20 to 30 minutes to record. I'm going to try to get two of them. So I'm going to set an hour where Do Not Disturb is not on.
After that hour, I'm going to take a 1015 minutes break. I'm going to check my phone. I'm going to scroll whatever I want to do. And then I'm going to come back and sat down and start on the next project. So having these set times Do Not Disturb, then having set work times where you're in deep work mode and deep focus and you can get things done.
So I've talked about that a lot is actually working to get something done, not working on something that's going to help with contact switching as well because you're being intentional about the time you have. Third, if you are using a ton of tools, are there any that you can get rid of, consolidate, bring together? So we're going to Marie Kondo, your tool stack. So one thing I found is that we were switching between a lot of software when it came to funnel building. We were
using one thing for our emails. We were using one thing for our landing pages. We were housing our courses on one thing. And so we had a lot of software. And so now we consolidated a lot of that. We're getting rid of ConvertKit. We don't really use Kajabi anymore. We think Kajabi is amazing. But for our tech stack right now, it didn't make sense. We're only building our landing pages, our email software, hosting most of our courses except for serve scale, soaring conversions for clients in
one place. So we consolidated so we can keep everything in one place instead of switching to different apps. Every time you switch to a different app, then that takes more brain power. We also moved our calendar system to a different one. And with that, we use Help Scout for email. So instead of each of us going into different email accounts. We just go to help Scout so all those emails are
consolidated. So are there tools that you can consolidate so you're not using so many different tools but staying on the same app? That's another thing that's going to help the context switching. And for me, I would love for us to get to a point where ClickUp chat was better so we could get rid of Slack. And we're not there yet, but that would be ideal because then
we're already in ClickUp. We don't need to use Slack. And so whenever we can consolidate things, try to use as much as what we have without having to contact switch, the more productive we can be. Because our number one killer of productivity is contact switching. And the average person is using nine plus apps per day to run their business. Okay, so what if we could take that down to three? Like, how incredible would that be? Now, another tip you can do is what
I call batch days. I just sent out an email about this and you all went crazy for it. I got so many responses, but I've been doing this for years, like at least four years now, and I've had my business for five where each day is a certain day. So I call them batch days or theme days or whatever you want to call it. And this helps with multitasking and context switching. So on Mondays, these are days for meetings and calls.
And so I'm not going to be working a lot. I'm pretty much just going to be on Zoom all day long or recording podcasts or something like that. I'm in it to be on camera on Mondays, team meetings, CFC calls, podcast, recordings. I'm going to be doing video all day long. That helps my brain because it's really, really hard to go from video to them writing copy then to video. And this is why I teach so many
of you that you don't hold discovery calls every single day. You ideally want to get to where your business can only have one day a week, where you hold discovery calls in the beginning. Maybe it's two, maybe it's three days, but it is not every single day. It's really hard to disrupt your day to go get on a discovery call. Contact switching matters. So Mondays it's my face day. Tuesday is deep work day. My calendar is literally blocked off on Tuesdays because it's a day for me to do
deep work. So what do I need to get done? Is there a project I'm working on? Is there a copy that needs to be written? When I was an ad manager, it is the day that I would write all the copy for all my ads, because that takes deep work. And see, I wouldn't work on one ad campaign and do copy graphics, set up the ad campaign that whole day. I would go through and see all the clients that I had and I would write all their ad copies. So I'm staying in a flow.
Even though I'm switching businesses, I'm staying in the flow because I'm not going from creating graphics to creating copies to setting up stuff that takes different brain power, different sides of your brain. So I'm staying in that constant state of flow. Then Wednesdays are my guest podcasting days when people can book me for a podcast. So that's another day that I'm going to be on camera and ready. Thursdays are Q and a call days. So I'm going to be on camera. I'm going to be doing stuff for
serve scale soar that is my serve scale soar day. That's where my focus is. How can I serve serve scale soar? And then Fridays, once again, it's a blacked out calendar day, but it's financial and fun Fridays. So this is where I'm going to go through all my numbers analytics. I'm
going to go through my PNLs, that kind of stuff. And then I'm going to also tap into one of the courses I'm going through and I'm going to do that or if there's a fun project that's outside of our 80% of what our business does, but I want to work on that 20%, that's the day I'm going to do it. So when I'm looking at that, when you batch days, you eliminate a lot of the context switching right there because you're doing the same thing all day long. When I was doing Pinterest
management, I would do all my Pin graphics one day. I would do all my Pin descriptions one day. I would do all my tailwind scheduling one day. And so I wasn't switching contacts and I was on the same apps. I wasn't switching between canva pinterest tailwind. I was all on Canva, all on Google Docs, all on tailwind. So see, when you can do that, you eliminate a lot of the contact switching and you're able to get stuff done so much
quicker. Because if we can eliminate even half of our contact switching, we go from an average of 40 hours per month wasting to 20 hours. What would you do within the extra 20 hours? Doesn't mean we need to fill it with work, but we could fill it with play. We could fill it with fun, for adventure, for our kids, for self care. I mean, possibilities are endless. And so think about if I can get a handle on this context switching, how much more time would I have, and my
to do list would feel way more manageable. And so when we go through that, we're going to put on Do Not Disturb. We're going to make sure that we're working in deep work cycles, so setting those time cycles timers so we can stay in there. We're going to consolidate and put together any type of tools. We're going to create batch days that make sense. And then we're also going to make sure that we ditch trash all the unessential things. So what are you doing? And a lot of this could be coming
from context switching. Let's say you get an Instagram message or something like that, where we're doing stuff that we maybe don't need to be doing. So an example of this is maybe you're a podcast manager and right now you're creating wave graphics for all your clients, but you find that none of the clients are actually using them. Can you eliminate this from your package? And then that's one less app you have to be on, that's one
less contact you have to switch. Can you look and say like, okay, I'm an OBM or I'm an ad manager and I'm creating these super detailed reports. But clients aren't reading them, they are only reading the top level stuff. Can you scale down and still provide excellent service? Yes. And so when we do this, when we tailor and streamline our offers, contact switching automatically lowers because we're not doing so much and a lot of times
we just need to streamline what we're already doing. This is why I'm a big fan of having things like Dubsado and HoneyBook and ClickUp so we can streamline our processes, which eliminates the need to contact switch. Because if you're going from Hello, sun for contracts and stripe for payments and then Canva for proposals like, oh, my gosh, you just did three different contact switching. When HoneyBook or Dubsado does it all. So this is where that consolidating tools
can really pay off. And when we streamline our offers, when we streamline our business, contact switching also naturally helps. And so I would love to know what are your tips for contact switching and what have you found help you most? Or are you guilty of doing this a whole lot? Another last tip that I want to leave you is you do
not have to answer messages as soon as they come in. You do not have to respond immediately to an Instagram, post, an email, a slack notification, give yourself time to breathe in space, to be able to know that nothing is like rocket science or brain surgery that you're doing that all messages can be like. As long as they're responded to in 24 hours, you're good. You don't have to
be 24 seconds from when they come in. So I hope this was helpful for you, I hope you get some more time back and I hope you use it for fun and not for work, but if you want to use it for work, that's great too. And I cannot wait to hear from you in my DMs. Let me know what are your tips or what is your number one takeaway from this episode. And until next week, y'all go out, serve your clients, scale your business and sort into the success you deserve.