Wait a minute. “That’s bogus” my brain told me, and there may have been an additional eye role, expletive, and small tantrum: No way. I’m a great multitasker. I was a great waitress through college and my multitasking capabilities carried me through Med School, residency, and have made me a pretty good ER doc. I think many of us high achievers keep adding balls to our juggling routine just to test how incredible our multitasking skills are. Sometimes, it may seem more like a flame thrower routine… and I’ve just added my 4 and 6-year-old into the mix.
So multi-tasking is a lie!? This was a personal affront at first. But in context, this started to make a lot of sense. I’ll share another great book, Peak Mind: Find your Focus, Own Your Attention, Invest 12 Minutes a Day by Dr Amishi Jha, PhD. In one part of this incredible read, she talks about the importance of “finding your flashlight” and the ability to focus our attention. A few of the highlights that hijack our flashlights: mind-wandering (defined as having off-task thoughts during a task), hyper-tasking (think constant engagement/digital overload), and how multi-tasking is really task-switching. Ooooh, I thought when I first read it.
Jha continues: The problem? It’s terrible for our performance/ accuracy/ mood, especially for tasks that require your active focused attention. “In a day that requires a lot of task-switching, you’ll have less integrity in any of the states your attention is in…You’re going to become slower, more error prone, and emotionally worn down.” She goes on “not only are you slower, but, worse, your mind-wandering is going up.” This means MORE task-switching…even slower… errors up; mood down.
Ooof. I feel that one for sure. For me, I think this is one of the reasons medicine and parenting can be so tough– there is often constant tension between the significant physical demands and cognitive loads at both home and work.
She also talks about the recalibration lag… a what??! Know this: your attention calibrates information processing to the specific task. When you switch tasks, it takes you a small period of time and energy to get back to what you were doing.
Let’s venture into the ER: The nurse who asks you about a patient who has been boarding in the ER for 19 hours and if they can have something for pain while you are trying to input orders on the older septic patient in bed 12… that HPI you were dictating when someone hands you a scary looking EKG from the waiting room…the critical read from radiology when you are doing a procedure… the specialist calling back because you were asked to “let them know” before admission when you are in the middle of discussing End of Life Care with a patient… All of these are every day ER examples of the constant jerk of the flashlight. It’s clear how we can be slower, more error prone, and emotionally worn down with the endless task-switching. |
Dr Jha’s advice: “monotask as much as possible. Get rid of the problematic idea that multitasking is impressive, desirable, or superior.” and when multitasking is unavoidable: realize you are going to be slower; accept then facilitate the “recalibration lag of task switching” –which can “make you faster and more efficient in the long run. You’ll miss less, make fewer errors, and (science suggests!) stay happier.”
New beliefs can be really hard at first. There are some fundamental constructs that we hold true about our lives, then when the framework starts to fall, it becomes clear that the foundation may not have been so strong after all. Maybe multitasking isn’t a skillset we shouldn’t hold in such high esteem. AND perhaps we should find ways to limit it from a systems level?
In work and life, productivity isn’t all about getting the most stuff done. It’s about getting the ‘right’ stuff done. It’s about eliminating the distractions, allowing you to focus on what’s important to you. This is one of the reasons I love the Jar of Life exercise and thinking about your top priorities and values… With this clarity, it’s much easier to see when things don’t align, and it makes it much easier to say no when something doesn’t fit.
