The last two weeks I’ve been Interstitial journaling at work. It has been quite easy to get into the Habit though my discipline isn’t perfect. To help I created an Interstitial journal Obsidian template to create an entry from anywhere in Obsidian using CTRL-SHIFT-I.
With a few days under my belt, I threw the files at Microsoft Copilot and asked it to analyse what it saw so far. Only a week of entries paints a fascinating picture.
You naturally create deep‑work blocks. Across the six days you logged 20 focus blocks ≥45 mins (median 66 mins, average ~70 mins). They most often occur late morning and mid–late afternoon,
I was pleasantly surprised to see there are larger blocks of time in there. Some will be meetings and others project work. It might be worth tagging entries with this distinction in the future.
Context switching is frequent, with 18—29 context switches a day!
That’s a little scary as Interrupting the flow of work has a tax. Anywhere between 2 and 4 times an hour. It is loaded because just as there are longer periods of work, there are times with rapid switching (sending emails, booking meetings, etc.). Each is a context switch and that needs to be acknowledge.
Your “rituals” cue transitions. Tea/coffee references are common (tea far more than coffee), and usually bracket a task switch or a reset after meetings—a useful lever for intentional breaks
I do try to avoid rushing from meeting to meeting wherever possible. Tea is also my water to keep my hydrated.
On 21 Jan and 27 Jan, mood dipped after fragmented mornings and heavier coordination. On days with 3–4 focus blocks, tone is steadier. Consider batching communication in set windows (e.g., early morning and post‑lunch), then silence notifications inside protected blocks.
There is a bit of bias here as I only mentioned my mood when it was down, yet interesting to see the supposed correlation between fragmentation and how I felt. Those days when I feel pummelled from all sides need to be recognised as just part of work. I’m interested to see how frequently this occurs in the future.