The multitasking myth
You neither save time nor increase your productivity
🏷️ Categories: Attention, Deliberate practice
Every day we try to convince ourselves that we can do everything at once: answer emails, Whatsapp conversations, take a call and plan the next task while checking mobile notifications. We have been sold the idea that being multitasking is an achievement, that it is synonymous with “productivity”.
We have idealized it to the point of including “multitasking” on our resume as if it were a desirable skill. I have seen this with my own eyes.
Big mistake.
As Lord Chesterfield, a British politician, said back in 1740 to his son, “there is time enough for everything during the day if you do one thing at a time, but if you try to do two things at once you won't have enough time even in a year” (Rosen, 2008).
How right he was...
Although we like to believe otherwise, science and our own experience show that trying to do everything at once is really impossible.
The impact of multitasking on your brain
Confusion, that's what it is.
What happens when we try to multitask is that the brain does not engage in all of them simultaneously; it just jumps from one to another constantly, wearing out concentration in the process (Koechlin et al., 1999; Hallowell, 2006). Once you have shifted your focus of attention, you do not instantly refocus, it takes a time known as “attentional cost”, ranging from 15 to 20 minutes (Mark et al., 2008; Smith, 2003). Considering that the average person looks at their phone 5 times an hour (Andrews et al., 2015), many people spend the entire day doing things without ever getting to focus and be truly productive.
Multitasking goes against the natural functioning of the brain.
When you multitask, blood flows more intensely to an area called Brodmann 10, which is in charge of managing priorities and decisions. But this process comes at a price, you are spending mental resources on organizing actions that would not be needed if you did things one at a time (Koechlin et al., 1999).
But there is more, it also affects your memory and your ability to sift through information.
When you focus, the hippocampus, useful for memorizing information, is activated. However, when you are multitasking, the brain tends to use the striatum, a region involved in learning skills such as riding a bicycle. This misuse of memory makes it more difficult to recall, relate and apply information (Foerde et al., 2006), and multitasking prevents you from deciding what information is relevant and what is not (Ophir et al., 2009).
Multitasking makes you waste time, get more tired, memorize worse, and make worse choices.
That is how beneficial it is.
How to stay focused in a distracted world
1. A system for organizing tasks and queuing them up
Instead of receiving a daily bombardment of tasks and switching from one to another all day long, keep 2 or 3 tasks active at the most and leave the rest of the tasks in a queue, all organized by priority. This way you get rid of the fatigue of having to do what's next and you will stop thinking about all the projects.
The fewer distractions in your head, the more space you have for what matters.
You can do it physically or digitally in many ways, I recommend you to use a Kanban or Ivy Lee's method to apply what I am talking about. Both methods are already explained in detail in previous letters and will help you to organize without stress and in a simple way.
You will save time and energy.
2. Delete as many (or all) notifications as you can
Imagine that while you're working someone is tapping you on the shoulder every 15 minutes to say, “Excuse me, do you have a moment?” Could you concentrate under those conditions? Well, that's exactly what happens when notifications go off.
The attentional cost we were talking about is stealing your time.
To avoid distractions, dedicate a space of time to attend to mail, Whatsapp, social networks, calls, meeting, etc. I call that time “communication” and I usually do it in 2 intervals of 30 minutes maximum each; one interval at noon and the other before the evening. It is there and not at any time that I attend to all my communication in order of priority.
If something is pending, nothing happens, tomorrow will be another day and the day after as well.
If you don't control notifications, notifications will control you.
And yes, I know that sometimes it can be difficult to do what I say. Don't worry if you can't structure 100% of your communication, I can't either, but just if you can organize 50%, it will make a huge difference. Think that by organizing tasks and eliminating notifications you will be more efficient, so you will save time that you can spend on enjoying other things and getting more rest.
It is crucial to go from full attention to full rest, and not to live in the middle of both, because in the end you neither work nor rest.
As Lord Chesterfield said to his son over 250 years ago, “there is time enough for everything during the day if you do one thing at a time, but if you try to do two things at once you won't have enough time even in a year.”
✍️ Your turn: How many times a day do you multitask? It's not easy, but I try to keep it to a minimum so that I'm the maximum time focused on what I'm doing.
💭 Quote of the day: “It's better to spend two or three hours of intense concentration on one thing than eight hours of diffuse attention. You want to be as present as possible in what you're doing.” Robert Greene, Mastery-greene.
I hope you liked it, see you soon! 👋
References 📚
Andrews, S., Ellis, D. A., Shaw, H., & Piwek, L. (2015). Beyond Self-Report: Tools to Compare Estimated and Real-World Smartphone Use. PloS One, 10(10), e0139004. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0139004
Foerde, K., Knowlton, B. J., & Poldrack, R. A. (2006). Modulation of competing memory systems by distraction. Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences Of The United States Of America, 103(31), 11778-11783. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0602659103
Hallowell, E. M. (2006). CrazyBusy: Overstretched, Overbooked, and about to Snap : Strategies for Coping in a World Gone ADD. Random House Digital, Inc.
Koechlin, E., Basso, G., Pietrini, P., Panzer, S., & Grafman, J. (1999). The role of the anterior prefrontal cortex in human cognition. Nature, 399(6732), 148-151. https://doi.org/10.1038/20178
Mark, G., Gudith, D., & Klocke, U. (2008). The Cost of Interrupted Work: More Speed and Stress. University Of California. https://ics.uci.edu/~gmark/chi08-mark.pdf
Ophir, E., Nass, C., & Wagner, A. D. (2009). Cognitive control in media multitaskers. Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences Of The United States Of America, 106(37), 15583-15587. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0903620106
Rosen, C. (2008). The Myth of Multitasking. The New Atlantis. https://www.thenewatlantis.com/wp-content/uploads/legacy-pdfs/20080605_TNA20Rosen.pdf
Smith, R. E. (2003). The cost of remembering to remember in event-based prospective memory: Investigating the capacity demands of delayed intention performance. Journal Of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory And Cognition, 29(3), 347-361. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.29.3.347
The best drilling managers I ever worked for insisted we completely finish the first step before we start the second.
This system works. Well motivated in one particular instance, we were able to get 8 hrs work done in three by adhering to this protocol.
Great column! Just this week I had a conversation with the wonderful G.Radick who raved about a book called Rest in which the author discussed the importance that rest had for many 10th and 20th century thinkers. In fact it would seem that major thinkers like Darwin purposely took leisure time and then were really productive in during their work time.
I also recently learned about a few people who work on different manuscript at the same time as in the same sitting... lets write a paragraph here about Darwinism and one here about the Polynesian war... how is that even possible I ask myself. I also heard that some authors like Asimov worked on different stories in tandem --- this seems like a decent strategy if I am not taking progress on project X, I can try to focus on project Y, and if not project Z.... eventually making progress on all three.