It's not burnout, It's context-switching fatigue

[#1]

Came across this Reddit post that perfectly described a problem I have been seeing around for a while… Context-switching fatigue.

The poster described a scenario I’m sure will sound familiar...teams bouncing between projects, standups, feedback, strategy docs, and sprint tasks all within a few hours.

On paper, you are simply executing multiple tasks.

In reality, you are shifting mental gears every 30 minutes.

Not just switching tasks, but switching contexts, which is a much heavier tax on attention than we tend to admit.

Every tool-switch, every conversation out of context, drained momentum, and no sprint report was going to catch that.

The comments were full of good advice:
→ Plan fewer simultaneous streams.
→ Narrow scope, clarify ownership.
→ Bundle similar types of work.
→ Create protected heads-down time.
→ Use async where possible, but with clear expectations.

But how many of these suggestions fall apart once you consider how fragmented our tool chains actually are?

Teams are still juggling between Jira for tracking, Slack for discussions, Notion or Confluence for documentation, and a dozen random Google Docs for “alignment.”

Context lives everywhere and nowhere (or in someone’s head).

And when the context is fragmented, decisions become shallow, or worse, inconsistent.

If your team has tried to tackle this, I’d love to hear what’s worked or where you’ve gotten stuck.

[Laurie Sciutti]

YES!  The constant context-switching is EXHAUSTING!  I'm also interested in hearing others' experiences in trying to find a solution.

[Namita Awasthi]

This hits home. We saw this exact pattern across multiple teams - burnout that wasn’t about workload, but about fragmentation.

People weren’t just switching between tasks. They were switching between tools, formats, teams, and mental models—sometimes 4 or 5 times an hour.

And it wasn’t just exhausting; it was inefficient. Even simple decisions took longer because the context was scattered across Jira, Slack, Confluence, emails, financial systems, and our internal apps.

We tried the usual fixes too:
- Fewer streams
- More async
- Better meeting hygiene

But the real unlock came when we shifted focus from “task management” to context management.

We asked, "What if every team, every customer, every project had its own living workspace—where all relevant data, documents, tasks, and updates flowed automatically from across tools?

It took effort to build, but the impact was immediate:

• Productivity increased by 10-20% 

• Discussions stayed focused because the full picture was always visible.

• Decisions became faster

In our case, we built something on top of Confluence to do this, but the principle applies broadly:
Context shouldn’t be something you piece together. It should just be there. You can check this website for more information.

Curious how others have tackled this too—has anyone found ways to “centralize context” without adding more tools?

[Evan Fishman - Quely for Jira]

@Namita AwasthiWe should talk! We built Quely to do exactly this but on a much larger, more structured scale.

You nailed it: the problem isn't just task overload. It's context fragmentation. And no amount of task reprioritization or “meeting hygiene” fixes that if teams are still stitching context together from 7 different tools.

Quely is our attempt to solve this at the source.

Instead of adding another tool to the pile, we act as the structured layer that pulls everything into one decision-making workspace.

Not just tasks, but the why behind them, discussions, dependencies, blockers, past context, and outcomes. Automatically pulled in from Jira, Slack, Confluence, Asana, oyur CRM and more.

We are building this for engineering, product, sales, Hr ... everyone!