Absolutely true, nothing unique about programming there. In fact, a game I like to play with people to show how bad context switching is, is the letters, numbers, roman numerals game.
Make two tables of 10 rows and 3 columns on a piece of paper. Column one is letters. Column 2 is roman numerals. Column 3 is numbers.
Your task is simply to write down the letters from A to J, roman numerals from I to X and numbers from 1 to 10.
You will do this twice and you will time yourself with a (cellphone) stopwatch. First time around in the first table you will fill each _row_ first. So you will write A in first row, first column, I into first row second column, 1 first row third column. B into second row first column and so forth until you're done.
The second time around you fill out columns first. I.e. A in first row first column, B in second row first column, C ...
It's a really nice game and you can even play it just against yourself or let your boss play it against himself if he wants you to multitask. If the other person says "well that's because I didn't know my roman numerals by heart any longer!" they can play it again. You can get better at it of course but it still shows the effects of context switching just from letters, to numerals to numbers. Can't get simpler than that!
Make two tables of 10 rows and 3 columns on a piece of paper. Column one is letters. Column 2 is roman numerals. Column 3 is numbers.
Your task is simply to write down the letters from A to J, roman numerals from I to X and numbers from 1 to 10.
You will do this twice and you will time yourself with a (cellphone) stopwatch. First time around in the first table you will fill each _row_ first. So you will write A in first row, first column, I into first row second column, 1 first row third column. B into second row first column and so forth until you're done.
The second time around you fill out columns first. I.e. A in first row first column, B in second row first column, C ...
It's a really nice game and you can even play it just against yourself or let your boss play it against himself if he wants you to multitask. If the other person says "well that's because I didn't know my roman numerals by heart any longer!" they can play it again. You can get better at it of course but it still shows the effects of context switching just from letters, to numerals to numbers. Can't get simpler than that!