Tools for Thought

In Reversing the Multitasking Impulse, I focused on multitasking as a problem. Multitasking isn’t inherently counterproductive, but its applications are limited. A strategic approach to multitasking can take advantage of the applications that fall within those limits.

Multitasking is commonly perceived as doing two or more things at the same time. More precisely, it involves attending to two or more things at the same time, which gets us closer to the root of the problem: split attention. Attention isn’t an all-or-nothing currency. We always have some of our attention on one thing and the rest on others. Otherwise you wouldn’t leave if the room you’re in while reading this was on fire. We always keep some attention in reserve.

The common advice to focus on one thing at a time is really a shorthand way of saying to put most of your attention on your most important task of the moment. Subjectively, we might feel like we’re giving 100 percent of our attention to one thing, especially when we speak of it in terms of “flow states,” but if someone were about to walk right into you while you were immersed in your activity, you would most likely move out of the way.

Cognitive and rote activities

The fact that concentration is never completely exclusive matters because different activities require different levels of focus. By understanding this in advance, we can combine or sequence our activities more strategically.

Let’s look at an example of “bad” multitasking. I used to listen to language learning CDs in my car. I noticed that it was quite easy to combine listening to language CDs while driving — as long as I was already somewhat familiar with the material. I stopped doing this when I realized that as the lessons got more advanced, listening to them would either endanger my driving or require repeat listening to really integrate the material, which was extremely inefficient. There’s a higher overhead to learning how to conjugate verbs than there is with memorizing verbs.

To understand what does and doesn’t qualify as effective multitasking, we can classify activities into two categories, simplified for convenience:

• Rote tasks
• Cognitive tasks

Rote tasks are mechanical actions, like walking down a street, pushing a button, vacuuming a floor. They require little or no practical attention, so they’re easy to combine without compromising their effectiveness. Cognitive tasks involve deliberate acts of thinking, like writing an email, completing a spreadsheet, talking to a friend on the phone. By definition these require increased attention, and are harder to combine effectively. They’re not impossible to combine, however, which is why so many people are tempted to try. It’s important to pay attention to the results of that behavior. If you habitually talk to someone on the phone while you’re trying to answer email at the same time, do you find yourself asking the person on the phone to repeat himself?

Strategic multitasking

Once we have some experience with how much attention each of our activities require, we can isolate which ones are candidates for combining.

Some rote tasks are more rote than others. Driving is a fairly passive activity, except when it’s not. The mind has to keep a certain amount of attention in reserve for potential emergencies and changes in road conditions, so trying to learn new material while driving is suboptimal — not to mention dangerous — due to the level of split attention required.

By figuring out in advance which activities require the least amount of attention, and making a checklist out of them, we can multitask more consciously. Suppose I want to listen to a podcast, but still get something else done at the same time. I can refer to a “multitasking checklist” of rote tasks.

• Cleaning activities
• Commuting via public transit
• Background computer tasks (e.g. downloading media, disk defragmenting)
• Gardening
• Some forms of exercise (e.g. treadmill walking, stretching)
• Waiting for appointments

Instead of trying to figure out in the moment what else you can do during one of these activities, you approach it from the opposite direction: you find the cognitive tasks that you can combine with these rote tasks in advance, and defer doing them until you have to do the rote tasks.

For instance, last night I received an email with links to eight audio lectures, six of which I want to listen to. I don’t want to spend five hours listening to these lectures exclusively, so I save that listening tasks for the times I’m doing one of the activities on the multitasking checklist. I got through one lecture while doing laundry last night. I’m not in any hurry to finish the lectures, so I’ll save them for the next time I do a cleaning activity. That way they don’t encroach on my production time or my leisure time.

I have a rule that if whenever I have to meet someone and find myself waiting, I brainstorm article ideas. Since it’s a rule, I don’t have to sit around wondering what I can do while I’m waiting, I don’t need any resources other than a pen and paper or cell phone, and I don’t get frustrated at having to wait.

Think about the level of focus necessary for the cognitive task, and think about whether or not the time and environment are conducive to the task. For instance, you could chip away at a PowerPoint presentation during a half-hour train commute, but at least 10 minutes of that commute will be lost to immersion time. You’ll also have to reserve some of your attention for making sure that you get off at the right stop, so you’re concentration is necessarily compromised. More importantly, you fragment your production time by not batching your work at the workplace (assuming that’s where the bulk of it needs to be done anyway). If you plan to work on a project remotely, try to avoid scattering your efforts.

Naturally, you don’t have to combine a rote task with a cognitive task. Nothing stops you from defragging your hard drive, running your washing machine, charging your devices and cleaning your desk all at the same time. Have fun with seeing how many rote tasks you can effectively overlap.

(Photo credit: noneck)

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