A very long time ago, when I was in grad school in San Francisco, I worked as a branch manager of the credit union at Kaiser Permanente. My boss, who ran the entire credit union operation, was one of those people who had read way too many self-help and empowerment books and believed herself transformed into a juggernaut of awesomeness.
She was not.
One of the ways that reality diverged from her self-image was in her belief that she was phenomenally gifted at multitasking. She attributed at least part of this ability to the fact that she was a woman, as she had convinced herself that men were limited to mundanely focusing on one task at a time, compared to the natural talent women had of being successful doing multiple things at once. And she expressed this belief to all of us on the staff, multiple times.
The problem was we all knew the truth, which was that she couldn’t get anything done. She started a project, left it half-finished as she jumped to another, doing a little on this one here, another one there, forgetting about what her priorities were, failing to meet deadlines because she became so distracted by some new thing. Meanwhile her team – thankfully not me, I was safely ensconced in that branch office on the other side of the bay – would scramble to complete the projects she started and dropped, since the success of the business depended on it. Of course, when this boss saw that the team had dragged something across the finish line she took full credit for it, every rescue by her staff another example of her uncanny gift of multitasking.
Yes, she was exasperating. And inept, in the end. But the irony is that her ineptitude was largely attributable to that one (alleged) skill she proudly believed she had in abundance, multitasking. She was bright enough and capable enough, and if she had just focused on the important things, giving each its due, she could have been much more productive. Her insistence on trying to do everything at once caused her efficiency to tank.
Her delusions were sabotaging her success.
“Recent estimates are that you can lose up to 40% of your productivity if you multi-task,” writes Susan Weinschenk Ph.D. in Psychology Today. She explains that multi-tasking takes longer to complete a given task, and you make more errors. “The term multi-tasking is actually a misnomer. People can’t actually do more than one task at a time. Instead we switch tasks. So the term that is used in the research is ‘task switching.’”
In other words, there is no such thing as multitasking. It is a myth, perpetuated by people with woefully short attention spans to rationalize why they always seem to be spinning around in circles. When we think we are multitasking we are actually doing a linear string of one thing at a time, often for short periods of time, and switching between them very quickly. Doing this carries tremendous costs to our effectiveness.
Task switching is significantly less sexy a term than multi-tasking. It (correctly) suggests a process that is more mechanical, and more cumbersome. Task switching has the aroma of analog about it, in comparison to the digital-sounding multi-tasking. But there isn’t much to be done about that limitation, it’s how we’re wired. That we switch our attention very quickly (from our perspective) makes it seem we are zooming forward. Unfortunately we’re not, and every switch comes with a penalty.
“A tremendous amount of research on task switching has made it clear that the switch cost effect can significantly impact productivity," writes Erin E. Rupp. "But it’s not just about time costs. The switch cost effect also:
“Reduces the quality of our work. When we switch tasks, we're more likely to make mistakes.
“Affects how much information we retain. Task switching disrupts our attention, resulting in poor memory retention.
“Impedes flow. Getting into a flow state requires a sustained focus on one task.
“Leads to decision fatigue. We become less likely to make good decisions as we grow tired, and task switching depletes our cognitive resources.
“Wastes time. Every time you switch tasks during the workday, you lose around 23 minutes of concentration. Considering we change our focus on average 15 times a day, it's a wonder any work gets done.”
We’ve all worked in environments where there were too many tasks and not enough people to do them. So we start wearing multiple hats, trying to get our main job done while simultaneously managing several other jobs off the side of our desk. And if any of those jobs put us at the mercy of someone who would interrupt us – answering customer phone calls, troubleshooting urgent emails, a boss who expects you to jump at their every whim – we fall into what we commonly call multi-tasking in order to juggle everything. But the research makes it clear we’re really not successfully juggling anything at all, we’re just dropping a lot of the balls and falling farther behind each time.
This explains a lot of the problems in a modern office that emphasizes response speed and volume of output. There are too many demands coming from too many places, and they compete with each other. We’re not just talking about clashing priorities, we’re also talking about those small but impactful annoyances such as requests for information, or those “do you have a minute” texts where a colleague needs clarification about something.
Especially bad in business communication
In the communication field we battle this problem all the time. The nature of our work often means time management can be out of our hands. The executive leader has a major presentation to make and is asking for multiple changes to the deck prior to heading to the airport. An external advertising campaign is about to launch and the social media component has to be updated as the print ads are revised. There’s a minor crisis with a branch in another part of the world and the PR agency needs to be given guidance on the statement being developed. Fires everywhere, typically not of your doing but which require your expertise to put out.
Compounding the problem is that the core responsibility of your communication job may be the writing of longer form pieces: ghost-authoring bylined articles for the C-suite, drafting web page content for a new initiative, or editing a white paper staking out company expertise in a hot market. This sort of thing requires time and attention. It is nearly impossible to do that if you are being constantly interrupted with petty nonsense (and so many of those interruptions are, in the end, exactly that, no matter how much the person on the other end of the exchange thinks it is urgent or important).
The most common advice is to use time-blocking. Set aside an appropriate chunk of your day to tackle that important core stuff that requires sustained attention. Mark that time in your calendar as booked. Set your status as Busy or, even better, Do Not Disturb. Then focus for the hour or three you will need. When that time is up you can respond to any messages that are waiting for you.
Some people also recommend trying to do “background tasking” as an alternative whenever possible. This is where you do something important in the foreground while something routine or even mindless happens in the background. The trick is to get the right pairings. An obvious example is listening to that obligatory town hall webcast the big boss always wants to hold while you exercise on the stationary bike.
Taking these steps requires a commitment. You can’t just “try” to not multitask, to not be distracted by other people bugging you. You have to actually do it, and mean it.
Back in 2010 Peter Bregman wrote an article in the Harvard Business Review called “How (and Why) to Stop Multitasking,” in which he tried an experiment and learned some interesting lessons. For a week he did no multitasking at all. If he was on the phone, he just engaged with the conversation, and never looked at his computer screen. If he was in a meeting, he paid attention only to the meeting. Any attempted interruptions were deferred or ignored until he was finished doing what he was doing.
“During the week I discovered six things,” wrote Bregman. “First, it was delightful. I never realized how significantly a short moment of checking my email disengaged me from the people and things right there in front of me. Second, I made significant progress on challenging projects, the kind that — like writing or strategizing — require thought and persistence. Third, my stress dropped dramatically. Fourth, I lost all patience for things I felt were not a good use of my time. Fifth, I had tremendous patience for things I felt were useful and enjoyable. Sixth, there was no downside. I lost nothing by not multitasking. No projects were left unfinished. No one became frustrated with me for not answering a call or failing to return an email the second I received it.”
Item six — that in the end there was no downside to stopping all multitasking — suggests that the real culprits in this task switching bog are us. If there’s no consequences for no more multitasking, and if no one will be angry that we are not at everyone’s beck and call every minute of the day, then why don’t we just stop doing it?
Here are a few suggestions on breaking the habit, from Carl Pullein:
Get enough rest. If you’re tired your mind will start wandering on its own.
Plan your day. This goes back to the time-blocking suggestion above. If you just improvise during your workday, you will be vulnerable to others putting demands on your time, since your schedule is “open.”
Remove everything from your desk and screen except for the work you are doing. If I’m working on an article like this one, the only things on my multiple screens are those related to that project: the draft I’m writing, the notes I’ve made, any online resources I’m checking.
Learn to say no. This is the important one. Of course, you want to say no as nicely as possible, you don’t want to burn any bridges, but make sure whatever style you use the end result is still no.
Turn off notifications. Manage how text messages, phone calls, and emails reach you while you are working, ideally not at all.
Find a quiet place. If your workspace is noisy or there are many people walking around, find a different place to do that important stuff. Maybe in a small conference room, or an empty cubicle on a floor where no one knows you.
Good luck with getting your time management and productivity back under your control!