The Illusion of Multi-tasking

For decades we have been led to believe that women can multi-task whereas men can only handle one task at a time. The common anecdote used is of the woman making dinner while also planning her kid’s lunches for school the next day, painting the ceiling and answering the phone all at the same time. Next the man pleads for quiet and space while he attempts to fry a single egg successfully.

It is fun imagery, but it is wrong.

As is often the case, the facts contradict the myth. Multi-tasking is actually impossible because our brains are not wired to handle it and we can’t train them to be more accomplished at juggling many tasks at once. Equally, although the idea that women are better multitaskers than men has been popular, there is no data available to support claims of a real sex difference.

For years I was wrongly in awe of those who juggled several tasks at once not realizing that they were being incredibly inefficient in all of them. I have even chastised myself for being someone who can only really do one thing at a time. When I am writing and Lyn asks me a question like ‘What shall we have for dinner?’ I don’t register her voice so focused am I on my writing. She gets frustrated with me and has to raise the ante with a loud ‘Hellooooo anyone home?’ Even then I will not answer until I finish writing the last thought in my head. I have often felt bad about this, but the research shows I am actually doing things the right way, one task at a time.

Multi-tasking is something we’ve long been encouraged to practice, but it turns out it is physiologically impossible for either gender. When we think we’re multi-tasking, we’re actually do what psychologists call context-switching, which means we are quickly switching back-and-forth between different tasks, rather than doing them at the same time. It feels like multi-tasking, but it is just highly inefficient single tasking on two things.

The book Brain Rules by John Medina explains how detrimental “multi-tasking” can be: Research shows your error rate goes up 50 percent and it takes you twice as long to do things. When we think of a startup then we immediately think of the need to multi-task. As single-person business owners we have to change our mentality and deliberately avoid doing that. Because we don’t understand how our brains work we try to do dumb things. We try to talk on our cell phones and drive at the same time even though it is literally impossible for our brains to multitask when it comes to paying attention.

When the brain tries to do two things at once, it divides and conquers, dedicating one-half of our gray matter to each task. When our brains handle a single task, the prefrontal cortex plays a big part. The anterior part of this brain region forms the goal or intention—for example, “I need to call my manufacturing vendor for a timeline”—and the posterior prefrontal cortex talks to the rest of the brain so that your hand reaches toward the phone and your mind knows a call is about to be made.

A study found that when a second task was required, the brains of the study volunteers split up, with each hemisphere working alone on a task. The brain was overloaded by the second task and couldn’t perform at its full capacity, because it needed to split its resources. When a third task was added, the volunteers’ results plummeted: The triple-task jugglers consistently forgot one of their tasks. They also made three times as many errors as they did while dual-tasking. Women take note. If you have been indoctrinated to think that you can multi-task and that it is a good thing to juggle several tasks at once, think again.

To work efficiently we have to single task. No multitasking. This might seem contrary to the demands of the single-person company where one is jack of all trades, master of none. We have to manage all the functions of the business. It is, however, one of the critical skills to master, and that is to have the discipline to work on one task at a time. It doesn’t matter that you oversee four or five functions. What matters is what I call ‘task discipline.’

Let’s say you have issues with marketing and manufacturing at the same time. When you are aware that both need attention, your response is to write each task on a white board, thereby ensuring that you don’t forget one. Then you set about fixing the first task, striking it off the board and going to the next. Task discipline means writing everything down. Old fashioned? Yes. Efficient? Yes.

So many single-person owners get it wrong. They work on a manufacturing conference call while simultaneously scanning through websites online for marketing ideas. Multitasking by working on different things at the same time makes us less efficient at everything.

“People who multitask are not being more productive — they just feel more emotionally satisfied from their work.” Says researcher Zhen Wang in a recent study on multitasking. She mentioned that if we study with our books open, watch TV at the same time and text friends every so often, we get a great feeling of fulfillment. We are getting all these things done at once, and we feel incredibly efficient. Unfortunately, exactly the opposite is the case. Students who engaged heavily in multitasking activities felt great, but their results were much worse than that of people who didn’t multitask.

Another problem is that multitaskers appear efficient to the outsider and we want to be like them. We see someone who can juggle emailing, doing phone calls and writing a shopping list on the side and think, “That is incredible! I want to be able to do that too!” We don’t realize how inefficient their brains are performing while they behave that way. So very unknowingly, we put a lot of pressure onto ourselves to juggle more and more tasks. When really, it only seemingly makes us more productive. The daily output, as Wang found, only decreases.

Clifford Nass, a researcher at Stanford, assumed that those who multitask heavily would nonetheless develop some other outstanding skills. He thought that they would be amazing at filtering information, switching between tasks quickly and keeping a high working memory. He found that none of these points are true: “We were absolutely shocked. We all lost our bets. It turns out multitaskers are terrible at every aspect of multitasking.”

People who multitask a lot are in fact a lot worse at filtering irrelevant information and also perform significantly worse at switching between tasks, compared to single-taskers. The only exception is listening to music while we work or play. Stanford Professor Clifford Nass says “In the case of music, it’s a little different. We have a special part of our brain for music, so we can listen to music while we do other things.”

Because the brain cannot fully focus when multitasking, people take longer to complete tasks and are predisposed to error. When people attempt to complete many tasks at one time, “or alternate rapidly between them, errors go way up, and it takes far longer—often double the time or more—to get the jobs done than if they were done sequentially.” This is vital advice for business owners of a startup. Don’t do it. Task discipline means one task at a time. This is largely because the brain is compelled to restart and refocus. A study by Meyer and David Kieras found that in the interim between each exchange, the brain makes no progress whatsoever. Therefore, multitasking people not only perform each task less suitably, but lose time in the process.

This is essential for the single-person business owner to be aware of. The solution is to have the discipline of task awareness.

Mary Kay who built a $3 billion business wrote two motivational books Mary Kay on People Management (1984) and Mary Kay—You Can Have It All (1995). At length she describes the significance of discipline of mind, and the importance of seemingly simple organizational skills like making lists. She shows validated data on how productivity and profit increase when business people finish their day by writing a “to-do list” for the following day.

She says “My lists keep me on track, and I give it all the credit when people tell me how well I follow up. I write down everything on follow-through, and once on paper, it becomes a tangible commitment that I must attend to.”

Task Discipline means that when you think of something that needs doing, and your immediate reaction is to write it on a list, you have what it takes to succeed. If your immediate reaction is to tell yourself you’ll remember it later, you do not have task-discipline, and your business success will suffer.

At the end of every day, write out a to-do list for the next day, and set it to priorities. This will do two things. Firstly, it helps take the stress away from the fear of forgetting something, and you’ll be more relaxed in the evening. Your family will stop complaining about you being so distracted all the time. Secondly, by writing the list you make a subtle commitment to perform the tasks. It is your disciplined commitment to ensure a productive day tomorrow. ]

When you enter your workspace the next day, review the list and start the first task immediately. This is an essential discipline. Do not be tempted to check emails, voicemail, or texts first, as they will scatter your focus in a hundred different directions. You have read the scientific evidence that proves behaving that way is highly inefficient and likely to cause errors.

Get that first task done before you give into the temptation to do anything else and then finish it. This is harder than it sounds. What if you are working on a supplies budget when the phone rings? Most people stop their task and answer the phone. As we have seen from the research data, it is an error. Finish the task, let the call go to voicemail. Answer it later when you finish your task.

The habit of getting easily distracted is exacerbated in a startup because we can find the isolation or loneliness sometimes difficult. We might even welcome a ping or call just because of that. That is why discipline is needed. Avoid the temptation to drop what you are doing in order to answer the phone or read a text.

This type of self-discipline does not come naturally to most people. It is a vital characteristic for the single-person business owner, so much so that I have dedicated a whole chapter to it later in this book.

An article on BBC in July 2019 said it all this way:

The constant ping of messages that keep us plugged into work chatter might be doing more harm than good. We feel we must respond – it is about work, after all. But always being switched on means we never have the chance to think deeply. And that is a problem for companies that want to get the most out of their employees.

The next great revolution in the office will need to correct this, according to one man who wants to reset the way we work. He believes that the value someone can bring to a company will be judged not by their skill, but by their ability to focus. But how do we find the time to shut off distractions and do our best work?

Our workplaces are set up for convenience, not to get the best out of our brains, says Cal Newport, bestselling author of books including Deep Work and Digital Minimalism, and a Georgetown University professor. In knowledge sector jobs, where products are created using human intelligence rather than machines, we must be switched on at all times and prepared to multitask. These are two things that are not compatible with deep, creative, insightful thinking.

“In knowledge work, the main resource is the human brain and its ability to produce new information with value,” says Newport. “But we are not good at getting a good return.”

Some people swear by multitasking even when we intuitively know that our brains struggle to concentrate on more than one thing at a time. Psychologists thought that busy multi-taskers possessed abnormal control over their attention. But evidence suggests that multi-taskers do not have a particular gift for being able to juggle multiple projects. In fact, in many cognitive tasks multi-taskers underperform. Our brains have a limited capacity for what they can work on at any given moment. And using tricks to cram as much into our working day as possible might be doing more harm than good.

Being switched on at all times and expected to pick things up immediately makes us miserable, says Newport. “It mismatches with the social circuits in our brain. It makes us feel bad that someone is waiting for us to reply to them. It makes us anxious.”

Because it is so easy to dash off a quick reply on email, Slack or other messaging apps, we feel guilty for not doing so, and there is an expectation that we will do it. This, says Newport, has greatly increased the number of things on people’s plates. “The average knowledge worker is responsible for more things than they were before email. This makes us frenetic. We should be thinking about how to remove the things on their plate, not giving people more to do.”

Fighting For Concentration

What might being wired for work at all times lead to? Inevitably, burnout. Newport describes this way of working as a “hyperactive hive-mind”. Unstructured conversations on messaging apps and meetings dropped into diaries on the fly congest our day. His objective, to give people the space to do their best work without distraction, is the subject of his next book: The World Without Email.

Newport’s idea is to allow workers to do less work, but better. Cutting out unnecessary chatter is important but only if the organization’s culture allows for slower communication.

“Managers spend 85% of the day in meetings, on the phone or talking to people about work, not doing it,” says Newport. “It’s flexible and adaptive, but conflicts with the way that the human brain operates. Those context shifts are devastating and burn you out. People then try to cope with ‘hacks’ like no-email Fridays. But this doesn’t work because there is no workflow in place for not emailing each other.”

Managers spend 85% of the day in meetings, on the phone or talking to people about work, not doing it. It’s flexible and adaptive, but conflicts with the way that the human brain operates – Newport

Going cold turkey on email or Slack will only work if there is an alternative in place. Newport suggests, as many others now do, that physical communication is more effective. But the important thing is to encourage a culture where clear communication is the norm.

Newport is advocating for a more linear approach to workflows. People need to completely stop one task in order to fully transition their thought processes to the next one. However, this is hard when we are constantly seeing emails or being reminded about previous tasks. Some of our thoughts are still on the previous work – an effect called attention residue.

Annoyingly, the busier we are, the more we switch So feeling busy is not conducive to deep concentration. Estimates of how long it takes us to refocus after a distraction vary. But at the top end, one study found on average it takes us 23 minutes 15 seconds to regain deep focus after an interruption.

The flip-side is that it is very convenient to have everyone in an ongoing conversation, Newport says. But convenience is never the goal in business, it is value. The assembly line revolutionized car production but it is not a convenient system – it is the system that produces the most cars quickly.

Our workplaces should learn from production lines

According to Newport, the knowledge sectors that operate in the most focus-oriented way are areas like software engineering, where the goal is to produce a product. “Agile, scrum and sprint-based executions have been used in these sectors for a while,” says Newport. “They work on only one thing for three days and during that time the product is their whole focus. Software engineers never let things unfold in an ad hoc manner. This is more amenable to the way the brain operates.”

They work on only one thing for three days and during that time the product is their whole focus. Software engineers never let things unfold in an ad hoc manner – Newport

The analogy with industry is useful because of the length of time it took to find the best solution for manufacturing products efficiently. Historically, products were manufactured from start to finish by skilled workers. This is convenient, but not quick. It took until the 20th Century to arrive at the production line. By focusing on one thing that the worker is a specialist in for a short and intense amount of time before passing it onto the next worker, they can concentrate on what they are good at. There is no reason to think that we currently have the best working practices for knowledge workers after only a few decades.

Some sectors are better suited to production line models, like software engineering, as Newport says. But anything that you want to produce, like a pitch for a client or ideas for a new product, can be run in a sprint. Assembling only the most essential people together to work on a project from start until finish without distraction and with clear goals will keep the process efficient.

“We’re in the landed gentry phase of the knowledge sector,” says Newport. “We haven’t reached our industrial revolution yet. In the knowledge sector the primary capital investment is the human brain, not factory equipment, but otherwise we should be thinking along the same lines.”

Who does it well? Newport says he has found no major companies who operate according to his vision – yet. But that will change quickly. In the meantime, the companies that encourage their workers to remain wired into multiple tasks at once will find themselves falling behind those that value slower, deeper, quality thinking.

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