Multi-tasking

Who came up with that ridiculous idea? It’s enough to make you crazy.

Attention will be paid. To whatever is most important, most captivating, or most urgent to you at a given time. It may be for 5 seconds. 

You cannot attend to two things at once. At best you can rapidly switch attention between two or more things. For some situations, that may be optimal. However, for many of the tasks of modern life that does not work very well. Thinking, reading, writing, even scroll and watching a movie require sustained attention to do them well. Every time you switch attention and come back, you have to reengage, which takes mental energy and some time. It’s super inefficient. A better strategy is to have sustained, focused attention to one task at a time and then switch to another for a longer period of time. Spend some time thinking or writing, and then go for a walk or check your email or some other mindless task. You will have the benefit of more productivity while doing the focused task AND the side benefit that your mind will continue to process ideas “in the background.” (Kind of like the continued calorie burning benefits after a workout.)

Remember the idea of cognitive load? (See my previous post.) You cannot work on two mentally demanding tasks simultaneously. You may not even be able to do two simpler tasks that draw on the same cognitive resources. I personally cannot listen to a football game on the radio while driving. I tend to “see” the game instead of the road and the cars around me.

Not only is multi-tasking poor for creativity and productivity, it’s terrible for relationships. “Listening” to your friend or partner while scrolling or texting almost guarantees you will miss part (sometimes a large part) of what they are saying. Furthermore, it signals that they are not important enough to warrant your full attention. Ouch.

If you are an addictive multi-tasker, start with one task that you will do without simultaneously doing something else. Turn off your notifications, put your phone in the other room. You may find it difficult at first. But you may eventually find that you do it more quickly and more effectively than when you were trying to juggle it around something else.