How Not To Multi-Task - Part 2
The conclusion of our guidance on what to do instead of multi-tasking.
We've said often on air that multi-tasking is a lie. We don't mince our words, and we totally mean it. Multi-tasking is impossible for humans. It's not even possible for computers. In the early days they just switched between tasks so quickly that it seemed as if they were multi-tasking. Nowadays they have multiple chips, so it can be argued they are multi-tasking, but you still only have one brain, so the argument doesn't help you.
Yes, you can rub your belly and pat your head at the same time. How much concentration does that take though? If we do it, we can't do anything else, because doing those two things simultaneously takes up our WHOLE brain.
We sometimes show this video at our conferences: Test Your Awareness: Do The Test. In it, you're asked to look out for the number of passes the basketball players make. Something else happens in the video, which if you haven't seen it before, you won't see. Why? BECAUSE YOU CAN'T MULTITASK! If you are counting basketball passes (a relatively simple task) you cannot see the other things that happen.
And, it doesn't matter if you're male or female, old or young, computer savvy or technically barely literate. No-one can multi-task. It's just not in our physiology. (Humans differ by .1% from each other, so we're all a lot more the same that we are different).
Those of you who are thinking, but this isn't me .. *I* can multi-task, you're wrong, but apparently not being convinced. Please try and experiment with us. Try these techniques for just a week and see if your output improves. If it doesn't, you can go back to multi-tasking with our blessing.
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Great Podcast guys! I'm a long time listener and first time commenter. Another option to Hazel for Mac users is TodayFolder (http://leehanken.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/today/). I like to use iCal to launch it every morning. Clean, fresh desktop, plus fewer icons on the desktop is supposed to make your Mac run faster.
Syd Salmon
Proganica Brand Development
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Great advice to start the new year
I know I've heard some of these recommendations mentioned in previous casts and it doesn't bother me one bit - it's always helpful to be reminded of them. I particularly liked the added piece of advice about saying "no" audibly to yourself when you feel the urge to depart from the task at hand. I started using that one last week and I know it will make me more productive and efficient.
When it comes to the desktop, I have a Windows-based computer at work and about a year ago someone showed me how I can could change the settings to hide the icons on the desktop, so they only appear as a list that pops up when I click on a small icon in the lower right. I hadn't thought about it much until just now, but it's so much nicer having a clean appearance to the screen when I log in in the morning.
Thanks again for the great work MT team.
simple but powerful illustration of how bad multi tasking is
Hi All,
Just wanted to share a very simple illustration of the effect of multitasking - a very visual way of showing this, when I first saw this it really made me think
Say you have 4 tasks to complete in a day , A B C D, you either
option1 block time and complete each in turn or
option 2 you splt your time between them,do a 1/4 of one task then 1/4 of the next one etc.
option1 AAAABBBBCCCCDDDD
option2 ABCDABCDABCDABCD
a big problem occurs here /\
with option 2 maybe you get A completed but B C D are lost, with option 1 A B C are done
Notice that option 2 means you only complete ANY task near the end of the day, so any disruption before then means a high risk of NONE being finished. Option 1 means you get to complete them as you go. Plus, assume you hand off your bit to the next person down the line - option 2 means they are waiting longer than necessary to start, if they also multi task the delay just grows.
Roy
Keep them happy?
Commenting in Roy's thoughts. Working for two bosses on two projects that take equal amount of time. Both expect that you progress continously. Automatically you will find yourself in situation ABAB and nothing get's finished. How do you make clear that you want to suceed on both projects but that you need to put one aside for some time without causing the reaction from the Boss that you are not able to finish a worktask?
over communicate intermediate deliverables
when this has happened to me i have had success with this method, I broke the tasks A B down into short deliverables of one or two day duration - time to complete - with dates if possible but certainly i knew the order and what depended on what , then i blocked time to work on A or B in a sufficient chunk of time to make progress - i have used 2hr chunks am and 2hr chunks pm, then i communicated with the bosses when i had completed the small deliverables - basically i needed to gain their trust that their work was getting done. then i tried very hard not to work on anything else but my planned A in the first 2hr chunk and planned B in the second 2hr chunk, i also made use of the 'waiting for x to get back to me' to provide a natural break from one task to the other.
i found that to build the trust to get managers to think they did not need to spend time chasing me i had to be absolutely on top of my progress on all my tasks, learned this the hard way when i was at a coffee machine and one boss asked on progress on their task and i could not provide a crisp answer
the example i gave A B C D was simplistic but i used it to good effect with engineers doing large design tasks on multiple projects, basically they would task switch when the pm phoned or came by their desk not when it was best for the task.
hope this helps