Multitasking isn’t the answer. Here are the 3 things you need to do instead.
“What looks like multitasking is really switching back and forth between multiple tasks, which reduces productivity and increases mistakes by up to 50 percent.” — Susan Cain
When we sit down to work we’ll find that we often end up with new thoughts uninvitingly popping into our mind.
Most of these are unnecessary fleeting thoughts that are distractions for us to swat away, but many thoughts tug at our attention that relate to our work and to our goal.
Some of these thoughts can sound and feel like things we ‘need’ to do.
When we take these things all into account, we end up with a long list of action items that are all calling for our attention.
This can overwhelm us and lead us to get frozen and even fall off. We don’t need to do this to ourselves. We don’t need to treat every ‘to-do’ the same.
And we certainly don’t need to multitask.
Multitasking is glorified by many but in reality it’s completely counter productive and is actually a sign of poor preparation. In fact multitasking, as its commonly thought of, is impossible. What we call multitasking is actually just task switching.
And task switching isn’t a good thing. There is an attention residue that results when we do it.
Studies show that while we go to work on our new task, we are still working with the task we just left in our subconscious.
So when we say we’ve done 45 mins on one task, we have to look at that honestly and examine how much of that time was spent mentally transitioning from the last task.
Probably a little more time than we realize.
This then has the effect of negatively harming our performance in the next task.
Not the effect we’re going for.
We can however reduce this residue and consequential decline in performance by using a combination of time pressure, reaching an end point and planning a return to the task.
Meaning if we agree with ourselves in advance on:
1. A sensible finish point and then pair this with
2. Assigning a reasonable deadline for the given task, as well as
3. A return to task plan so we’re ready to quickly restart our task, it allows us to move into the next task with our attention better intact and thus able to perform better.
What these things all do is effectively give us a greater sense of closure.
It closes the open loop we have on task one allowing us to be fully present in task two.
But notice how this is not multi tasking as we know it, i.e. doing two or more tasks concurrently.
This is about maximizing our performance on one task at a time, which is the most effective thing we can do when it comes to doing our work.
Overall though, we have to ask where this desire to do as much as we can as quick as we can really stem from?
Why does it feel like we are in a constant race, an endless competition to produce?
Yes there is a societal pressure to maintain the standard agreed definition of productivity. That we are only productive as measured by the quantities of work we produce.
It’s all about doing more.
But more quantity is not always better.
Yes the saying practice makes perfect is a cliché for a reason, but the more accurate saying is perfect practice makes perfect.
It is the combination of what we do, how much we do of it and how well we do it that leads to producing the best work we can.
And in fact, today evidence doesn’t support the narrative that more is better.
Yes in the beginning, leaning into a more quantitative approach over quality will certainly serve you and help you raise your quality baseline quicker than those who only focused on quality when starting. However, after a quantity phase, the time comes to switch focus and hone the quality of our work.
And we can’t say that we are short of quantity of things to choose from.
Whether it’s software, information or media, the world is now so full of options that sheer quantity of production is actually not valuable enough.
Whatever our endeavour is, quantity alone doesn’t help us stand out in a ever growing market place.
Quality must be part of the equation.
It is only when we have quality quantities over long periods of time, demonstrating our consistent competency, that we start to get traction with our work.
So let’s resist falling into the busyness trap, doing many things at once, and feeling like we have to constantly producing.
Yes we must practice with high volume in private, and especially in the beginning, but we mustn't compromise producing with as high quality as we can, one thing at a time.
