#3 Batching, Specialization, Context Switching and Call of Duty

There are 3 highly critical concepts that have absolutely monumental impact on productivity and efficiency:

• Batching - grouping similar or identical tasks together for faster execution and greatly increased output. We naturally tend to batch things together on daily basis. For example peeling potatoes all at once, instead of walking into the kitchen, getting one potato, peeling it, washing hands, leaving, doing something else and then coming back to pick up another one. Sounds insane right? Well, we tend to do that in other areas of life not noticing it. In Call of Duty batching happens when we enter small maps like Nuketown, Shipment 24/7 or Shoot House, where game is fast. Enemy contacts are batched one by one so fast it gets 10x more output in terms of unlocked camos, as well as training in moving and shooting. For context name "batching" originates from baking: "batch" - quantity produced at one baking. Really good explanation of batching by Tim Ferris: https://youtu.be/ghVdzAeX0bg
• Specialization - is the idea that humans learn to perform a given task faster and better the more they repeat it, what encourages division of labor and turns people into specialists. In Call of Duty specialization happens when we choose to work on single weapon type. By choosing lets say sniper type, we get ~5x more time on that weapon compared to just playing all types, with that getting better at it 5x faster. Same applies to specializing in selected maps. Everyone loves playing Nuketown as we all know it better than our own home, since map gets its remakes in new games all the time. This can be easily applied outside of COD. In life, years back I got a weekend job to repackage food. There were 5 of us when we got there and we were expected to do 100s of packages each, over next 2 days. Instead of working alone, we quickly figured out we can form a production line, 1 person takes off old packaging, other person removes items, next one adds what is missing, next one wraps it up, last one organizes it with other completed packages. It took us few hours and we were done, taking all the money for 2 days. ‌‌Specialization is also a massive life hack in corporate environment. In companies that grew to thousands, tens or hundreds of thousands of employees the areas of specializations are so small, that learning something for 1-3 months would make anyone a World class expert in that one small piece.‌‌ Fantastic resource for this concept is Matt Ridley and his TED talk on how specialization in early humans changed our lives forever: https://youtu.be/OLHh9E5ilZ4
• Context switching - is an idea where one needs to alternate between 2 or more completely unrelated tasks. In bro science terms, every time we pick up a task our brain loads related ideas and concepts into current working memory for incredibly fast access and performance. This also applies to motivation and dopamine where our mind is aligned and motivated to finally do the task. Switching to new tasks forces abandoning all of that and wasting time to create that emotional and brain power momentum from scratch. In Call of Duty context switching is the most painful when getting new game with completely new set of maps and we don't know any of them. The way that game alternates between maps in this early stage significantly slows down our ability to learn maps fast. In life context switching seems to hurt the most when we must abandon something we are motivated to pursue to do something completely new and unexplored, we don't know how to do yet and if there is anything to be gained by doing it at all. For example having to leave that last 10% of Math homework that we know exactly how to do as we were solving similar math problems for last 1.5h and being forced to write some piece for Languages class about a topic we know nothing about. Good read on how problematic context switching is for Elon Musk: https://www.inc.com/justin-bariso/elon-musk-twitter-multitasking-productivity-how-to-solve-problems.html

Something that shines through this post is that all 3 concepts are heavily related. Batching and Context Switching are inversions of each other. The more we can batch, the less we need to context switch. Famously Tim Ferriss would set aside a week per quarter to batch all the video recordings for Youtube, that he would then post over next 3 months. At the same time both increasing Batching and reducing Context Switching will guarantee increased specialization.

It is interesting to note that when Bill Gates and Warren Buffett claim to attribute their massive success to "focus" on single area in life for prolonged time, they are essentially talking about an edge case of Batching on macro scale. They would also avoid macro Context Switching into other interests and hobbies for large time frames.