Context switching for writers
When you travel to a new place, you’re seeing everything with fresh eyes. Noticing details. Not taking anything for granted.
On the other hand, when you’re stuck in a routine, doing the same things over and over, working at the same desk, cooking in the same kitchen, sleeping in the same bed—you operate on assumptions. The environment is familiar. Less attention is needed.
Your mind is like a place. You can travel there. Explore it.
It has different regions. Each thought is a city. Each topic is a country. Each theme is a continent.
A writer, especially, is an explorer of their own mind.
If you are stuck in a city, ruminating on one thought unproductively, uninspired; remember that you can travel.
That city will be there when you come back. Save the draft.
Travel to a different country, maybe even a different continent.
Just as a traveler becomes more perceptive in a new environment, switching your focus to a new context as a writer allows you to drop your routine assumptions and access renewed inspiration.
But don’t travel too frequently.
There is a balance between depth and breadth.
If you only visit a city for a day, you don’t see much. Don't get a comprehensive sense of its culture.
If you stay in one place for too long, you get bored, stagnant. You lose your excitement to explore.
As a writer, be ready to switch contexts when you feel your rate of new ideas starts to decrease. Or, when you’re just not enjoying your current writing and the idea of traveling to a different space in your mind sounds like fun.