There’s a Right and Wrong Way to Multi-Task

Note: This is an excerpt from Growth & Productivity: 14 Principles to Achieve More, a free e-book from Grove Ave, a new startup that helps individuals focus on their growth. Click here to get your free download of the 70+ page e-book.

Another way of maximizing your time is to pair cognitively simple and cognitively taxing activities. For example, you can wipe down your kitchen counters and listen to the latest educational podcast or audiobook you love (I really enjoy listening to the Philosophize This! podcast while doing chores), or eat lunch while chatting with an associate about your latest project or idea, or talk about a new idea while you’re running or lifting weights. You’re basically engaging both thinking systems, (system 1, automatic and intuitive, and system 2, deliberate and effortful), of your brain simultaneously. This concept is most famously associated with Nobel Prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman. Think about Systems 1 and 2 like this: instantaneous and seemingly effortless tasks like adding 2 + 2 engage system 1 processes (see how you knew the answer very quickly), while more laborious and difficult cognitive tasks such as writing an email or an e-book engage system 2 processes. Here’s a graphic that explains the two systems

Now, you would potentially run into problems if you try to engage your system 2 on multiple tasks simultaneously. The research on multitasking is pretty unequivocal — it doesn’t work and makes us less efficient. So unless you’re really superhuman, you’re probably tricking yourself into thinking you are better than the average person when it comes to multitasking. Small interruptions, to answer email, text messages, or look at notifications, can really disrupt your train of thought as well, requiring even more time to put yourself back into the task. So do yourself a favor when you are really trying to get work done — put all of that stuff on mute!

However, there are some multi-tasking strategies that do work. One is the aforementioned pairing of automatic tasks with effortful tasks. Another is to work on related tasks together, a great suggestion from Entrepreneur magazine. This way you’re able to be more cognitively efficient when approaching the tasks that you need to get done. A strategy that is easy to implement and has been proven to work is to cognitively off-load to a list or step-by-step guide like I mentioned in Principle 2, thereby turning what was once a difficult and cognitively taxing task into something less so.

Summary

• Pair mindless activity with more cognitively taxing activity
• Don’t multitask too much, unless it is a number of activities in which you’re already well-practiced

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