Tools for Thought

At least a couple of times a month, some new publication or productivity blog will critique multitasking, usually as though the case against multitasking is a new idea. In fact, virtually no one recommends multitasking as a best practice, except for occasional tips like listening to spoken word audios while jogging. It’s almost always discouraged rather then encouraged.

But that hasn’t always been the case. Multitasking first became fashionable in the eighties, when some PCs first became capable of running more than one program at the same time — something we take for granted today. The word became an ideal and metaphor for human performance, and by the nineties, “multitask” started appearing on classified ads and resumes as a desirable trait, rather than a tic.

As is frequently pointed out, multitasking as a metaphor has serious limits. A computer that seems to run several applications simultaneously is actually switching between them by an order of milliseconds. Humans take much longer to switch between tasks. More importantly, a computer resumes each task exactly where it left off. Humans have to resume each task by spending at least some of their time regaining their focus. It’s much more inefficient for a human to switch between tasks than it is for a computer.

Why people multitask

When people start a task without finishing it, they naturally feel unproductive. The longer a task remains unfinished, the more boredom and anxiety it generates. The sooner a task is completed, the better. With physical tasks, that’s not a problem, since it’s almost always possible to work faster. But knowledge work is fundamentally different. Very few people believe what should be a truism: It’s impossible to think faster.

No matter how much we’d like to believe otherwise, we have absolutely no control over the rate of our thinking. We can crank widgets faster, but not design them faster. All we can do is allocate the amount of time that experience teaches us we need to create a certain amount of creation.

What does this have to do with multitasking? It has to do with the difference between being productive and feeling productive. If I’m feeling anxious about my lack of progress on completing this blog post, I can toggle to Gmail. Then I can be “working on” two things instead of finishing one, and only experience half the incompletion. The more tasks we perform simultaneously, the less responsible we feel for any single one.

We perceive workload by the number of tasks that consume our attention, not their inherent significance. When people complain about their workload, they use phrases like “I’ve got so many things to do,” rather than pointing out an individual task whose significance is a bottleneck or attention sink. Focusing on quantity reduces the perceived need to prioritize. If everything matters, nothing matters.

Developing deep focus

Rather than create a list of tips to reverse the multitasking impulse, I want to recommend just one discipline to develop: deep focus. While we can’t control the rate of our thinking, we can minimize the number of internal and external distractions that impede that rate. I’m deliberately avoiding the transcendental language of “flow” to keep things actionable.

The exercise is simple. Get a timer and a notepad, and pick a single task. Starting with a relatively short interval of time, like 10 minutes, set the timer for your designated interval. During this time, you’re only allowed to do one of three things:

• Do the single task you’ve assigned for yourself
• Write down any unrelated ideas that come to mind during this time
• Absolutely nothing

If your task is to write a journal entry, and you suddenly remember that you need to pick up some lettuce at the store, put that down on the notepad, then return to your journal. Don’t keep stray thoughts in your head. If you find while attempting to write that no words are coming, do absolutely nothing until you either start writing, or the timer goes off. In this context, doing “nothing” for the set time is endurance training, not idleness.

10 minutes may not sound like much, but you may find that it seems like an eternity if you follow the three rules literally. No drinking beverages, no music (calm or otherwise), no TV running in the background, no looking at things other than your task, no interruptions allowed. Using a timer prevents you from periodically looking at the clock to distract yourself your task. You keep working until you hear the alarm.

If you’re in an environment that’s not conducive to following the rules, change the environment beforehand to avoid using it as an pretext for allowing distractions. Turn off cell phones and message notifiers. Work in isolation, even if — especially if — you like having other people around. That’s one of the reasons for starting with short times. It’s hard for many people to work this way for two hours, but anyone can step in the virtual isolation tank for 10 minutes. The process is similar to the Ten Minute Dash, but instead of using an uninterrupted frame just to get started, the goal here is increase the ratio of uninterrupted work until the entire task can be performed from start to finish with no interruptions.

Once you can handle 10-minute sessions of deep focus each day for a full week, increase the session time to 30 minutes. Most think-intensive tasks require somewhere between five and 15 minutes of immersion time, and it’s a good idea to plan your production time by factoring in your running start. I personally count 30 minutes of scheduled writing as 20 minutes of actual writing at peak concentration. One hour would be 50 minutes.

After a week of 30-minute sessions, increase the length to one hour. Double this the following week; rinse and repeat as desired.

Separating working from training

If you want to apply the deep focus process to your current work, that’s fine, but don’t sort of do it. Unless the nature of your work is compatible with the level of firewalled attention required, then don’t count it as part of your training sessions. For instance, if you have a task that requires input from coworkers, pick another task that doesn’t, for training purposes. There’s a reason that pianists practice scales rather than Beethoven when they’re just getting started.

The immediate goal of deep focus training isn’t necessarily to get work done, but to increase endurance of boredom and anxiety. Once you’ve gained some momentum in working interrupted for two or more consecutive hours, feel free to shift that training time to actual production time.

(Photo credit: cackhanded)

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