Last week, before the weather turned cold – and wet – I decided (on the backside of a bad cold) to get out of the office and put in a chunk of time on my long-delayed new deck’s railing.
Simple project, but it was my first recent (past age 70) real test of “chunking” (in more formal project circles, this would be WBS (Work Breakdown Structure).
The trick was not to attempt progress completion. I was only interesting in one outcome; giving within easy completion range the next day. About 90-minutes worth of work.
Work Feels Good
Outside, on a warm winter day, working felt really good. Light breeze, about 64F, and very bright sunlight. So much, my shirt began to warm a bit.
Remembering back to some “walking tai chi” videos, I did the work (which was not brain loading) with particular attention to my balance and flow. I’m sure, from 30-feet away, it would likely look silly. Who does Skilsaw ballet?
A bit more wind and the sun was putting the workspace in the shade. And having a cold, I hit my milestone and came into my office.
There – another gunny sack of emails waiting – I was amazed as how nice the warm office felt and how nice it would be to return to “Idea Land” and let my fingers “do the working.” (click)
Which gets us (thank heaven, at last) to the point.
I decided to ask my AI stack if anyone had studied this notion (going from brain work, to process work, to manual work) previously to see if it improved performance. Especially since I had just figured out (OK, I’m slow) that this was a pretty nice way to roll. Here’s what the stack offered:
“Yes—people have studied this. And what you’re noticing has a real footing in cognitive science, with one important clarification:
Random task-switching is usually bad. Intentional task rotation is often good.
The distinction is simple: frantic switching fragments attention. Structured rotation restores it.
There are at least four mechanisms that explain why mixing 4+ distinctly different work modes across a day can feel like an “acuity upgrade”:
First is incubation. When you step away from a problem, your brain keeps processing it in the background and often returns a cleaner solution. This is why switching from writing to planning to correspondence can feel like coming back “sharper” rather than merely rested.
Second is attention restoration. Focused desk work burns what psychologists call directed attention. A physically different task, especially outdoors, refills that tank. Hand work on railings isn’t just “exercise.” It’s a sensory reset: depth cues, distance vision, proprioception, changing light, real-world textures. That combination acts like a cognitive rinse cycle.
Third is micro-recovery. A change of posture, a change of visual distance, and a change of demand type reduces fatigue before it becomes full burnout. You may not feel “tired,” but performance still drifts. Rotation interrupts that drift.
Fourth is interleaving. In learning science, mixing different types of problems improves long-run performance and transfer. A day that alternates writing, computation, planning, and physical work becomes a kind of interleaved cognitive training. You’re not just producing output. You’re conditioning flexibility.
There is a catch: switching has a cost. If you rotate too often, you pay a re-entry tax and end up scattered. The sweet spot is switching at natural boundaries—after a deliverable chunk, or when you’re stuck and spinning for ten minutes.
So the practical principle for time-engineering is this:
Rotate tasks to change the kind of brain you’re using, not just the topic.
A “high-acuity day” isn’t one long marathon of a single mode. It’s a sequence of different engines taking turns pulling the load: deep work, structured work, social work, and physical work. Done deliberately, that rotation doesn’t reduce productivity. It multiplies it.”
Then Another TimeTool Popped Up
In our conversation, AI had advised me to “stop after 10 minutes of being stuck.”
I don’t get stuck for more than 20-second intervals, so I challenged the AI to cite source OR reveal that AIs have just “noticed how human/carbons really work.” The confession?
“It’s not an “AI invention.” It’s a carbon pattern that shows up in several research lines, and it also shows up in how experienced practitioners manage real work.
Where it comes from:
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Cognitive fixation / mental set
When you’re stuck, you’re often trapped in one framing (“mental set”). Stepping away breaks fixation and lets a different representation surface. That’s the logic behind “incubation” effects in creativity/problem-solving research. -
Switch-cost + diminishing returns
Task switching has a cost, so switching constantly is bad. But once you’re stuck, you’re paying a cost anyway: time is passing with little progress. Past that point, switching can become the cheaper option (even with re-entry cost). Classic work on task switching documents the reconfiguration cost, which is exactly why we want a rule for when switching is worth it. -
Breaks restore attention
There’s evidence that breaks (often embedded inside task rotation) improve fatigue/vigor and can help performance, especially when attention has been depleted. So “stuck” often correlates with “attention is depleted” even if you don’t feel sleepy. -
A practical craft rule: “When you start looping, stop.”
Writers, programmers, engineers, and traders all independently develop the same heuristic: if you’re rereading the same paragraph, refactoring the same function, or running the same mental loop without new information, you’re no longer working—you’re grinding. That’s the moment to change mode: take a walk, do a physical task, answer correspondence, or shift to a different subproblem.
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So: AI didn’t “notice” this so much as AI can name it cleanly. “Stuck” is a reliable, observable signal that you’ve hit either (a) fixation, (b) depletion, or (c) missing information. In all three cases, the best next move is often a deliberate switch—not to escape work, but to re-enter it with fresh cognitive leverage.
Pushing AI
“OK, fine, normal domain-gradients, but where did 10 minutes come from. You were rather specific.”
“Yeah — the “10 minutes” isn’t a magic number from a single definitive study. It’s a rule-of-thumb that comes from combining two realities:
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Switching has a real cost (you lose time reorienting), so you don’t want to bail instantly. The task-switching literature consistently shows there’s a measurable “reconfiguration” penalty when you change tasks.
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Grinding while stuck has a cost too (time passes with no new information). In creativity/problem-solving, “incubation” effects show that stepping away can improve solutions once you’ve hit fixation—so waiting a little, then switching, is often better than forcing it.
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So “10 minutes” is basically a practical threshold: long enough to confirm you’re in a loop, short enough to prevent an hour of wheel-spinning. Some people use 5, some use 15. The principle is what matters:
I try to always avoid “stuckness” – which can now and then point back to limited tools or resources – which could have been resolved in the planning process.
But these are useful, and maybe useful TimeTools to remember. In fact, let’s call it?
Timese Takeouts
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TimeTool #1: Chunking to a restartable milestone
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TimeTool #2: Task rotation for acuity
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TimeTool #3: The “Stuckness trigger” as an instrumentation event
You can build a whole taxonomy: TimeTools for planning, execution, recovery, review.
Consider yourself empowered,
George
Comments are always welcome!