It’s a strange time to be a knowledge worker. In theory, knowledge workers today should be more productive than ever: all the data and documentation one could ever need is available in the cloud, and clients and coworkers are only a Slack ping or a Zoom call away.  

But many knowledge workers would tell you our current claustrophobic era of instant information access has gotten too hectic. In fact, 94 percent of workers reported being stressed in 2021.

Now that the vast majority of knowledge workers are working from home most days, the pitfalls of a purely digital workplace have become clear. Silos between different departments and offices may be a thing of the past, but new silos are cropping up and impeding productivity in the form of disparate applications.

Right now, you’ve got important data points for a case study sitting somewhere in a Slack thread, four versions of a report due this week in your Gmail, a half-finished collaborative sales deck in Google Slides, and countless important files saved across Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Docs -- the list goes on.

No wonder we all feel a vague thrum of anxiety between the hours of 8am-5pm no matter what our day looks like. And our day does look busy: ever since most knowledge workers transitioned to work from home, we’ve been having a lot more meetings. In fact, we’re now spending 148% more time in meetings since the start of the pandemic.

Our meetings are more than just weekly check-ins, too. In lieu of brainstorming in a real conference room, we’re giving pitches, editing documents, and making strategic decisions collaboratively over Google Docs and Slack. That means when Google Calendar notifies you that a meeting you forgot about starts in 15 minutes, you’ve got to be prepared to contribute meaningfully.

And that’s a little stressful when you’ve got back-to-back meetings all morning, you’re working on several projects simultaneously, you can’t remember what you named that important file, and you don’t know where you saved the final version of that report. It takes time to track these documents down, and even more time to brief yourself on what the documents are about so that you’re prepared to share your insights with your equally harried coworkers.

The jumbled process of going from one meeting to the next and rereading documents to prepare for new conversations about different projects has a name: context-switching. And it’s reducing your productivity and your ability to think deeply.

Rapid context-switching is making you feel less prepared, more forgetful, less organized, and more stressed at work. Why? Because each time you get distracted from the current task you’re working on, it takes an average of 23 minutes to refocus.

And these distractions happen a lot. One study found people spend an average of only 3 minutes on any given task before switching to something else.

So it may seem innocuous to check your email while you’re coding or writing a press release, but it’s actually derailing your day one notification at a time.

Considering that one study found the average person checks their email 74 times a day, it can clearly be difficult to resist the gnawing urge to switch between apps and tabs during your down time.

Basically, what we’re dealing with now is a recipe for feeling overworked, overstressed, underprepared, scatterbrained, and overwhelmed -- when, in fact, due to our infinitely split attention spans, we may be getting a lot less done in a day than we think.

That’s not good. But it also doesn’t have to be this way.

There are a few simple things you can do every day to improve your mood, boost productivity, reduce stress, and cut down on context-switching so you can focus your time on the things that really matter. Try one or two strategies and see how they improve the way you work and feel.

1. Block off time on your schedule to truly focus

Your boss is probably already doing this.

Blocking off large chunks of meeting-free, distraction-free time on your calendar for 1 or 2 hours to signal to your coworkers that you’re busy and may not respond to emails or Slack messages is critical to reducing context switching.

This is time you can use for what Cal Newport calls deep work -- cognitively-intense, uninterrupted work. It may feel irresponsible to our insanely anxiety-ridden nervous systems to avoid checking email for a couple of hours, but the truth is this is when you can be your most productive.

After some practice, you’ll begin to feel less stressed, more focused, and more efficient during work hours than you’ve felt in a long, long time.

2. Stop working when you’re off the clock.

Like me, you’re probably working from home. It can be hard to find the off-switch when your office is your bedroom.

But it’s exceedingly important to clearly delineate your work day from your real life so that you can truly feel restored, re-energized, and relaxed on your time off. Taking breaks is good for your health and your brain function, and feeling like you’re always on increases stress and reduces productivity.

According to the Cleveland Clinic, you’ve got to work less to work smarter. Research shows taking breaks improves your mood, boosts your performance, and increases your ability to concentrate and pay attention.

There are a couple things you can do to create a separation between work and after work, even if you’re home all day. Choose a space that isn’t your bedroom or living room to take over from 8 to 5. It can be your kitchen, your back porch, your apartment complex’s community space, a coffee shop -- whatever. Just don’t work from your bed all day, or subconsciously, you’ll never leave work.

Then at 5, power down your laptop and take a walk. Some people are calling this a virtual commute, and it improves employee wellness. Do a ritual that you used to do when you were commuting home from the office -- stop for a coffee or a smoothie, listen to music, or call your mom.

3. Declutter your workspace

A lot of us simultaneously feel that we have too much on our plate and that we can’t accomplish anything significant during the day. This uncomfortable, paradoxical phenomenon is one of the more irksome aspects of being a knowledge worker right now. But there’s something pretty simple that can help.

According to the Princeton University Neuroscience Institute, decluttering your workspace helps to promote an internal sense of calm and improve focus.

Leaving too much clutter around reduces the brain’s ability to focus and process information, ultimately tiring out our cognitive functions over time.

Visual clutter “competes with our brain’s ability to pay attention,” researchers stated, and contributes to our sense of being overwhelmed and overworked.

Neuroscientists discovered that the brain is not very good at blocking clutter and focusing in on one object over another. As a result, keeping your desk setup as clean, clutter-free, and minimalist as possible takes this particular subconscious source of stress out of the equation.

Try taking five minutes to put yesterday’s empty coffee cup in the sink or move your notepad into your desk drawer before you even open your email. It’ll make it easier to zero in on the important stuff.

4. Try Classify. It’ll help you stress less.

What’s Classify? It’s your ticket off the dystopian notification-email-Slack-back to email-wait-where’s-that-final-report-draft-was-it-Google-Docs-or-Word carousel of stress.

Sounds nice, doesn’t it?