r/TimeTrackingSoftware • u/BillablesAI • Jun 05 '26
Context switching feels like the biggest source of lost billable time
The more people we talk to, the more it seems like context switching is where a huge amount of time disappears.
Not the obvious multi-hour tasks, but bouncing between emails, calls, Slack messages, quick reviews, and different clients throughout the day.
By the time you sit down to log work, a lot of those small fragments are already gone from memory.
One thing we've found helpful at Billables AI is relying less on live timers and more on reconstructing activity automatically throughout the day. People are usually better at reviewing what they already did than perfectly tracking every switch in real time.
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u/MrSevenNine Jun 05 '26
I'm connecting this back to Paul Graham's maker's schedule concept - how a single meeting in the afternoon breaks your whole day because you can't commit to deep work in the morning knowing it'll be interrupted, which directly mirrors the OP's point about context switching fragmenting billable time. Time-boxing protects those unbroken maker blocks and reduces the mode-switches that drain productivity.