Most MSPs don’t overload their teams with too much work.
They overload them with too many states of work.
A technician might start the day working on a security alert, shift to a user issue, jump into an internal question, respond to a manager’s request, update documentation, and circle back to the original task - all before lunch.
None of this shows up as a spike in ticket volume.
But each switch carries a cost.
Context switching forces the brain to drop one mental model and build another. In complex environments, where systems, clients, and exceptions vary constantly, that rebuild takes time and energy. Even when individual tasks are small, the cumulative drain is significant.
The result is fragmented focus.
Deep work disappears. Preventative tasks get postponed. Root cause analysis is skipped in favor of quick fixes. Documentation becomes an afterthought because there’s never a clean block of time to complete it properly.
From leadership’s perspective, activity looks healthy.
From the service desk’s perspective, nothing ever feels finished.
Because context switching isn’t logged, it never shows up in dashboards. Capacity models assume linear work. Staffing plans assume uninterrupted time. Utilization metrics assume tasks start and finish cleanly.
Reality is messier.
Technicians bounce between systems, conversations, and priorities, often redoing work simply to regain context. Admin work, onboarding commentary, and constant re-explanations pile on quietly - draining momentum without ever entering a queue.
This creates the familiar operational paradox:
Everything looks fine, but nothing feels fine.
When leadership relies solely on ticket metrics, pressure often gets misattributed to performance or discipline. In truth, the system is measuring the wrong thing.
Context switching isn’t a personal productivity issue.
It’s an operational blind spot.
This is the final major category of invisible work explored in The Work Breaking Your MSP - and one of the biggest reasons MSPs underestimate how much work is actually happening inside their service desk.