Multiple Clients. Competing Priorities. Constant Context Switching. Here’s How I Keep It Straight.

One of the challenges of working with multiple consulting clients, or even working as a General Manager or a C-level executive in a company, is constantly shifting your attention from one very different problem to another.

As an independent consultant, on any given day, I may move from network security to AI to MDM, while tackling a completely different deliverable for each client. And each client has its own market, competitors, language, priorities, and personalities. When I was a General Manager, I moved between product management, product marketing, engineering, a customer issue, or preparation for a board meeting. More recently, I’ve watched my daughter experience the same kind of constant context switching as she launched KarinaJ Denim, her women’s denim business built around a simple idea: women’s jeans should be comfortable enough to wear all day. On any given day, she may move from product design and manufacturing to marketing, customer feedback, fulfillment, and finance. Context switching is unavoidable. The challenge is being able to quickly pick up where you left off and give the next issue your full attention.

Meetings, emails, and Slack messages can easily consume the day. But some of the most important work requires uninterrupted time to think, whether that is researching a market, working through positioning, recommending a product decision, or preparing for an important discussion. So, I try to protect my time for that work rather than letting the daily emails and Slack messages crowd out the important. I also use a few simple techniques to make context switching easier.

• Before I leave a client or topic, I try to capture the context while it is still fresh. I keep running notes on decisions made, unanswered questions, ideas I want to revisit, and the next one or two things I need to do.
• Then, when I come back hours or days later, I spend a few minutes reloading that context: What are we trying to accomplish? Where did I leave off? What is the next question I need to answer?

That simple habit saves me from having to reconstruct the whole problem every time I switch.

Perhaps most importantly, I’ve stopped thinking of all this context switching as a burden. There is a surprising amount of cross-pollination. As a consultant, something I learn about positioning an AI solution for one client may change how I think about network security or data architecture for another. The same thing happens for a General Manager. A customer conversation can influence product decisions. A discussion with engineering can change how you think about positioning. Preparing for a board meeting can force you to see the business more clearly. And watching my daughter build a business has given me another perspective on this: in a startup, the boundaries between functions almost disappear, and decisions in one area can quickly ripple through everything else.

Of course, confidential information and individual issues stay separate, but the learning compounds. Managing multiple clients or functions isn’t just about juggling more work. It is about developing habits that let you shift gears quickly, retain the important context, and bring your full attention to whatever problem is in front of you.

Note: I’ll keep sharing lessons from my 25+ years as an independent consultant, CMO, and GM—what’s worked, what hasn’t, and what I’m still learning. If that sounds useful and you don’t want to miss my future posts in your LinkedIn feed, follow me on LinkedIn or send me a connection request.