I am crazy. I work two rewarding but difficult jobs. I have four kids, an amazing wife, and a lot of people who are constantly needing my attention. I love this life of mine. But I often felt like the old variety show act where the guy or gal is constantly spinning a bunch of plates on top of sticks. You can only keep that going for so long before they crash. So I decided to stop spinning the plates. Nothing about the level of my responsibility or the amount of work I have to accomplish changed. If anything I do more work now. Here’s how I get more done without crashing. I stopped multitasking, because I’m not good at it.
You are not good at multitasking. You might think you are. I know some of you think are. But research has actually demonstrated that the better you think are at it—the worse you really are. Let’s do a simple exercise to demonstrate this.
Exercise One: write three columns similar to the ones below using Arabic and Roman numerals and the first ten letters of the alphabet. For this first step write them in rows going across from left to right alternating the categories as you see in the example. So you’ll write 1, I, A, 2, II, B, and so forth until you finish with 10, X, J in the final row at the bottom. Time the process with the stopwatch on your phone and write down the results at the top of your grid.
1 I A
2 II B
3 III C
4 IV D
Exercise Two: write the three columns again. This time do it from top to bottom. In other words, don’t switch to the Roman numerals until you’ve finished the first column of 1-10 and don’t switch to the alphabet until you’ve completed column two. Time yourself again. Write the results at the top of the second grid of characters.
Your second number was faster. Probably by quite a bit, and it always will be. No matter how many times you repeat this exercise the second number will always be faster. Sure, you can rig the results and your first number will definitely improve the more you do it, but getting better isn’t the point.
The point is that this is an exercise in what is called context switching. Context switching is what you are doing every time you shift gears to think about something different. So when you’re on the couch folding laundry, watching Stranger Things, answering texts, and checking in on your work email amidst the cries of needy kids—you feel REALLY busy—and you are, but it’s literally taking two, three, or even four times longer to get it all done.
There is a cost to context switching. A real measurable mental cost. You just proved it to yourself with the above exercise. First of all it costs you time. It not only costs you time, but it also costs you energy. It takes mental energy to suddenly shift gears. So when you live in the above chaos I described, juggling seventeen things at once, you feel exhausted at the end of the day for a reason. Mentally, you’re spent. And then it costs you even more time because of the mistakes you have to correct along the way.
Some of you do this so habitually that your own brain has tricked you into thinking that you are both great at multitasking, and that you are accomplishing more by doing it. Not true. What’s happened is that you’re mind has actually rewired your neural pathways—the structure your brain uses to send and receive information.
Guess what? It’s pretty hard to reroute those things. Your brain doesn’t like that. It also likes the path of least resistance. That’s why you can’t just watch a show with your significant other anymore without checking your phone every 90 seconds. It’s why you can’t walk from from your car to your office without headphones in or checking your phone again, or both. You have wired your brain to attempt to do many things at once and you’re not doing any of them as well as you could if you chose only one of them to do.
Maybe you think you don’t have a choice. And some of it could be outside of your immediate control. I get that. But try this. It’s a technique sometimes called batching or blocking. I’ll explain it to you using how I handle email.
I’m a pastor and an adjunct professor so email is an ever present reality. But I don’t like it. I think it’s second rate communication at best, but it’s what we have so we roll with it. Dozens and dozens of emails pour in every day. So a long time ago I gave myself permission to stink at email—and somehow I got a lot better at it. This is what I do. I spend about five minutes at a time roughly three times during my work day looking at email. That’s it. I block off a chunk of time and I only do email then. I don’t even open the app on my phone unless I’m traveling or think of an immediate reason to send a message that can’t wait. I also never open an email I don’t intend to respond to immediately. Because then I have to tackle the same email twice. More wasted time.
Email is only one thing. There are many things that can be done in blocks or batches. Probably almost anything repetitive and systematic about your life or work can be done this way.
How can you get creative about eliminating context switching in your daily routines? How can you eliminate the feeling of busyness and replace it with actual worthwhile accomplishment? One of the ways you can do that is by seeing multitasking for what it is—the place productivity goes to die.
Try it. I promise it will not be easy. But I also promise that as you figure it out and things change for you, it will definitely be worth it.