You must be familiar with the advice that tells you not to multitask, so that you can produce better work. That advice would be great if we live in a perfect world where we have ample time to execute one task at a time.
We should debunk the idea that multitasking is all bad. In fact, multitasking can level up your productivity, if you do it right.
You should not multitask when you must focus deeply. It is a bad idea to multitask when you are doing a cognitively challenging task, as it demands all of your attention.
Yet, there are some situations where multitasking is not only suitable, but ideal.
Multitasking can happen effectively in these situations: when your mind naturally wanders as it works on solving a problem, when you batch shallow tasks to be completed quickly, and when you combine an activity requiring focus with another activity that does not.
Is Multitasking Possible?
Each and every day, you are probably guilty of a modern day habit known as task switching. Office workers, remote workers, millennials, managers, and employees all experience this to some degree.
You receive demands, requests, questions, and conversations from people such as your bosses, colleagues, friends, and family. Sometimes, you are forced to multitask. These are tasks that require different degrees of brainpower.
Know this: each task has its own “context” that is different from another task. When you task switch, you take your brain to a second context to operate in.
In different contexts, there will be different rules that govern how each task can be effectively operated on. This means that your second task has a different context, and within it, a new set of rules and parameters. Your brain needs to temporarily forget the rules and parameters of the first task, as it adapts to the rules and parameters of the second task.
Since task switching demands a lot from your brain, it is inefficient.
When we continuously start and stop cognitively demanding tasks, we sacrifice energy, time, and thus productivity. Studies indicate that we sacrifice 20-80% of overall productivity every time we do a task switch.
However, for tasks that require less focused attention, the costs of task switching goes way down.
Tasks that require less focused attention are “shallow” work. Shallow work allows our brains to task switch quickly, without taking too much time to adjust to specific rules of operation.
Therefore, if you cannot avoid task switching, plan it out this way: Have your brain switch between a difficult task and an easy task.
The difficult task can be a cognitively challenging task such as project planning, writing, critical analysis, coding, and video editing… anything that involves deep work. The easy task should be something that requires little brainpower, such as daily chores, listening to music, taking a shower, or taking a walk. I will go into many more examples here in this article.
Multitasking is possible when you do NOT execute two different tasks that each involve some degree of focused attention at the same time. You can multitask more effectively when you combine a cognitively challenging task with a more simple, everyday task that demands little brainpower.
When You Should Multitask — And How
Here are the times when multitasking will actually work in your favour.
Multitask when you have inactive attention
We have three different types of attention during the day: proactive attention, active attention, and inactive attention:
- Proactive attention: You have a zone of focus that enables you to take on the most cognitively challenging tasks.
- Active Attention: A zone where you are plugged in but somewhat tiring out, sloppy, and occasionally distracted
- Inactive Attention: The poorest level of attention, occurring when you are technically awake, but cognitively absent. You will struggle with any sort of complicated task.
Typically, a person has proactive attention in the morning, which are the freshest hours. Proactive attention gets depleted after 1-3 hours of deep work, and you enter a slightly distracted but functional zone of active attention.
As the day passes, your attention levels deplete. The active attention you have begins to fade. After lunch, many people experience a slump, and they enter a zone of inactive attention.
You want to multitask when you experience inactive attention. This is because inactive attention is appropriate for shallow work, which is perfect for multitasking.
Doing shallow work is something that forms a part of our everyday routines. Organizing our calendar, cleaning up our emails, simple data entry, and texting our friends are not tasks that require us to rack our brains.
The key takeaway is to do deep work while we have the best highest attention levels, and batch our shallow tasks — the easy ones — to be done in a 1-2 hour timeframe. Ideally, this timeframe should occur after we tackle our cognitive challenging tasks. Then, we can just batch our mindless tasks and quickly ‘blitz’ through them.
Multitask when you must perform a ‘mindless’ activity
Determine which activities are actually mindless ones. Be realistic. If you are adapting to a new recipe, then meal preparation is not actually ‘mindless’. However, when you have cooked the same meal plenty of times, you will be able to effectively multitask. Listen to podcasts, audiobooks, chat on the phone — do these other tasks since cooking requires little brain power.
Similarly, you can multitask when taking a shower, walking, commuting, and there are dozens of other ‘mindless’ activities you do each day.
In terms of practical advice and examples……
People who employ multitasking wisely in their lifestyle design will save time and become more productive. What are the practical steps? Here is a short list of takeaways.
- We can make use of poorer attention levels during the day to ‘blitz’ quickly through a bunch of shallow tasks.
- It is possible to perform two tasks simultaneously – just pick the right combinations (one should be a ‘brainless’ task)
- Allow mind wandering (“natural” multitasking) and use it to gather ideas and details
We have already discussed the first two. The final point, mind wandering, describes a natural way that our brains do multitasking.
What our mind does is that it “roams”; it operates on algorithms that run subtly in the background. On its own, your brain is constantly figuring out problems and ideas that are interesting or important to you. This happens through autopilot, task-unrelated thought.
When we let our mind wander, we may stumble upon ideas, and make important connections that we might have missed otherwise. You may notice your mind-wandering algorithm running at times, especially when your current task does not demand a high level of focused attention.
Sometimes, let your mind wander whilst sorting your emails, scheduling tasks, and doing repetitive, everyday things.
Here is a list of examples of when to multitask. Notice that all of these examples fit the above three conditions when multitasking can be productive:
- Listen to podcasts while doing ‘mindless’ hobbies like gardening
- Schedule work tasks while eating
- Monitor emails while doing data entry work
- Get exercise done while travelling somewhere (If you need to get your cardio done, you can walk, run, or cycle to a particular destination you need to visit.)
- Stand up while working (Using a standing desk)
- Watch TV/ educational content while doing simple yoga stretches for blood circulation
- Reflect while taking a walk
- Work on your computer and make your to-do list as things ‘come up’ in your mind
- Take a shower and allow mind wandering – the drawing of connections between different subjects, contexts, and perspectives
If you need more ideas to design your lifestyle, here are further examples of how you can multitask while working from home.