EVIDENCE_BOARD

The Context-Switch Guilt

THE HIDDEN RULE

“Interruptions mean I'm not in control of my time, and I'm failing at real work.” Attention residue (Leroy, 2009) is real: part of your mind stays on Task A while you're doing Task B, and recovery takes ~23 minutes. But fragmented days are a feature of collaborative work, not proof of weakness.

INSTANCES (10)

“Every interruption proves I can't protect my own time”“I should be able to switch tasks instantly without losing focus”“The day feels wasted if I didn't get deep work in”“Slack messages are stealing my real work”“I felt guilty for being interrupted and not staying focused”“Meetings are killing my productivity”“A good engineer doesn't need recovery time after switching contexts”“I should be able to say no to interruptions”“Fragmented days mean I failed at time management”“Staying late is how I reclaim the deep work I lost to meetings”

RESEARCH FINDINGS

EVIDENCE

The Science of Engineering Pace: Why Comparing Velocity Is the Wrong Metric

"She ships twice as fast as me — I must not be cut out for this" is the kind of thought software engineers rehearse constantly, usually at 11pm staring at a half-finished PR. What the research shows i

MECHANISMS

Velocity Comparison Trap

The velocity comparison trap is the cognitive pattern of using a peer's visible output speed — tickets closed, PRs merged, commits pushed — as a proxy

10x Myth Mechanism

The 10x myth mechanism describes how a finding from a 1968 study of 12 programmers completing a single debugging task became a widely-repeated folk be

Overwork-Burnout Spiral

The overwork-burnout spiral describes the pattern in which the belief that longer hours signal dedication and capability drives engineers to push past

RESEARCHERS

Nicole Forsgren Steve McConnell Margaret-Anne Storey Ciera Jaspan

STATUS: READY_TO_INSTALL

“Every interruption proves I can't protect my own time”

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