Myth Of Multi-tasking

Distractions are everywhere. Emails pop up while you try to finish a task. You remember that your taxes are due soon, but you are busy trying to meet a deadline. It often feels like we should be doing a dozen things at the same time. The temptation is to multi-task — answering your email while monitoring social media and listening to a presentation.

Our brains do not work that way. Several studies have looked at the cognitive performance of heavy multitaskers. Those are people used to working with lots of distractions, permanently on their smartphones while reading on the computer and listening to music. Heavy multi-taskers thought that they were more productive than light multi-taskers, but they were wrong. Multi-taskers are less productive.

The problem is that our brains cannot engage in two cognitive tasks at once. Research has shown that our minds have a “cognitive bottleneck.”  You essentially work by iterating a see-think-move loop. First, you see stuff (perception phase). Then, you process it, think about it, and decide what to do (cognition or “central processing” phase). Finally, you do something about what you have decided, maybe by typing a sentence or grabbing an object (motor phase). Alas, your brain can only engage in one cognition phase at once. You can monitor a waiting room while working on a report, and you can walk while thinking about a problem, but you cannot answer an email while you follow and actually understand a presentation.

When you try to multitask, your brain just queues the cognitive phases of the different tasks, never managing to engage in more than one at a time. If you try to work on two cognitive tasks at the same time, your brain just switches back and forth between them, never really concentrating on either one and making mistakes. The meeting ends, you have missed half of what the speaker said, and there are mistakes in every email you sent.

Multi-tasking taxes your (working) memory, which is limited. A study found that people with larger working memory capacity are better at multitasking. But even those people would probably have been more productive by giving their undivided attention to each task, one after the other. One fMRI study worryingly suggested that multi-tasking for long periods of time might even result in permanent brain alterations, including lowered gray-matter density in the anterior cingulate cortex, a part of the brain associated with cognitive control. 

If multi-tasking does not work, how can we be more effective? But you don’t need to completely reorganise your life to reap the benefits of that. You simply need to realise that single-tasking is often more effective. Many modern time-management techniques are all about concentrating on a single task at a time. For example, time-boxing means setting a block (or “box”) of time where you will work only on one specific task, making sure that you stop when the time is up. For instance, you schedule answering emails from 9 to 9:30 and from 16:00 to 16:30, but you stop (and close the email program) once the alarm clock sounds. 

Time-blocking is taking time-boxing to the extreme, and filling your entire (work) schedule with boxes for specific tasks so that you always know what you are supposed to do. This might sound daunting, but it can work if you approach it as a preliminary schedule and keep tweaking and adjusting it until it clicks into place. For instance, if your 30-minute email slots keep spilling over, make them 45-minute slots.

Some advocates of time-blocking will tell you to time-block your entire life, including leisure and family time. That might not be a good idea for everybody. Research has shown that, if you schedule leisure activities the same way you schedule work, you will enjoy them less. If you treat having coffee with a friend the same way you treat a dentist’s appointment, you will end up seeing pleasurable activities as chores.

So, where is the sweet spot? Start small. Look at those tasks that really get in the way, like answering emails or putting files away, and schedule them into time boxes. Move them around and adjust how long they are until you are comfortable with them, but remember that, when the boxes end, you stop. Then, look at specific tasks you have to complete, like writing a report or cleaning a room at home. Schedule time boxes for those, and keep experimenting. If you end up planning your entire work day (including domestic chores) and you are comfortable with that, go ahead. If you end up with only half of your week time-boxed, that is also OK. In any case, resist the temptation to go beyond your work and chores time. You are supposed to enjoy your free time, not turn it into work!

– Psychology Today