Notes on: The Truth About Multitasking — and What to Do Instead

'The Truth About Multitasking — and What to Do Instead' is an article by Marina Khidekel and was originally published on thriveglobal.com.

How to treat your attention like the superpower it is.

Multitasking has become common practise, whether you are checking emails and responding to Slack while you are supposed to be on a Zoom meeting, or you are trying to have a conversation with a friend, feed your baby and ensure your toddler is behaving; our attention is often being pulled in multiple directions.

Multitasking has become increasingly hard to avoid in our hyperconnected always-on world. Our ability to tackle many things simultaneously is commonly seen as a good thing and is thought to signify productivity, but the truth is, doing two ore more things at once is actually counter-productive.

The real skills that we should commend and strive for are focus and prioirtization, which lead to spending our time in more meaningful and productive ways, which leads to improving our satisfaction and feeling of accomplishment with what we are doing.

There are many trains of thought that promote focus and prioritzation, like the Stoics, including Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Seneca, who advocated for living in the moment and eliminating distractions.

Multitask is a myth

When we multitask, we are sacrificing the quality of our attention. The brain cannot focus when it is being fragmented and trying to do too many things. According to a report by the American Psychological Society’s 'Journal of Experimental Psychology' multitasking can cause productivity to drop as much as 40 percent. This amount is could be even higher for people who think they are good at multitasking.

Interruptions increase stress, frustration and pressure on time and effort. Going between tasks might seem easy to do, but each shift comes at a cost that you may not even be aware of. You get into a rhythm for a task, and when you are interrupted, it takes time and energy to get back to where you had left off. This draining of time and energy leads to mistakes and impedes creative thought and problem solving. Our brain can only handle a certain amount of information at a time.

The Stoics believed in focusing on what we can control, and this includes our attention and our reactions. If we are able to stop ourselves from worrying about things that are outside of our control we would save time, energy and attention that can be applied in more productive ways. Being disciplined with your time requires conscious effort to control where you are putting your attention.

The devices that have evolved to make us more accessible and productive actually exasperates the problem. This is especially true when we are facing multiple devices at a time, like our phone and laptop. Studies have shown that the cingulate cortex, which is the area in the brain that processes information, shrinks when trying to manage multiple devices at a time.

Multitasking also negatively impacts how we communicate and form connections with others. It is not uncommon to see people on their phones as opposed to engaging with people who are present. According to a study by researchers at the University of Essex in the UK, just having the phones present were enough to lower trust and feeling of empathy towards others.

A Strategic Start to the Day

How you start your day will impact how the rest of your day goes. Many people have the habit of reaching for their phones first thing when they wake up, which will set the mind in many directions right away, but instead, if you took a moment to do some deep breathing and focus on yourself, and once up, continue your morning routine with something that works well for your mind and body, like meditating, exercising, or even just having breakfast in silence, and you can set the tone for the day in a positive way.

Many successful leaders start their day with intention. Richard Branson wakes up early and find it helps him achieve more in a day and in life in general and Oprah Winfrey starts her day with gratitude and finds it helps her start her day in a positive way. Only after you have nurtured your own well-being should you consider thinking about your other goals for the day.

One way to approach the rest of your day in a productive way is to take some time in the morning to write down your priorities for the day. If you start your day with clarity on where you need to focus your attention you will reduce stress early and improve productivity throughout the day. The morning is also a good time reflect on more ambitious, long-term projects as well.

Your Attention is a Superpower

These days, especially with the help of our devices, the distractions are endless. According to a study by the University of California, Irvine, it takes about twenty-five minutes for us to return to the same level of focus after being interrupted. By using micro-steps we can begin to take control of our never ending things to do.

One micro-step that you can easily implement that will have an immediate impact on reducing your to-do lists, is if there is something you need to do and it will only take a few minutes, do it right away. It is far more productive to eliminate it from your attention all together, rather than trying to plan a better time to do it, which itself takes time, but gets you no closer to completion.

Think of attention like a muscle, in order for it to stay strong you need to put effort into exercising it often. One suggestion is to schedule time in your day for free thinking, which helps you sort through your thoughts and refocus your attention. You need to protect and manage your time and not let seemingly more important tasks takeover. Taking time to prioritize should be the priority. A good strategy to protect your time is to get good at saying no. It is impossible to control your own time if you are allowing other people, like family friends and colleagues fill it for you. Another useful tactic is to let people know your intention. For example, letting your family know you have an important task to do and need to focus will reduce the likelihood of you being interrupted by them.

As the 2020 documentary, 'The Social Dilemma' illustrated social media companies, like Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn are designed to manipulate human behaviour and hijack our attention, and this manipulation has implications to our social democracy and even health. Our addiction to our devices is by design.

One hack, Tristan Harris, a former design ethicist at Google suggests is by setting up your phone so that you only receive notifications from people, like on WhatsApp or iMessage, not from apps that are just trying to get you to log back on and steal your attention.