How to Finally Stop “Juggling Things” — a Cognitive Neuroscientist’s Take

Multitasking is so ingrained in our mentality about how to work that “juggling so many things at the moment” has become the natural, permanent state of a modern human living in the developed world. We’ve all heard, vaguely, sometime in the last 10 years, that multi-tasking doesn’t work — whether it was something you overheard at the office, or were told by someone who read an article, somewhere, but didn’t remember who wrote it and what it meant. As a person who’s worked on several research projects on the cognitive neuroscience of memory, I feel personally obliged to tell you all: you’re working wrong. Here’s my breakdown on why multitasking doesn’t work, how to-do lists are hampering your performance, and what you can do today to start working better.

We can’t do two things at the same time

The brain is adept at a lot of things, but multitasking isn’t one of them. When we work on a task, we’re very much able to focus well. Through a mechanism known as selective attention, we drown out the outside world and focus on the task at hand. We piece little bits of information together in a sort of mental dashboard known as working memory, and through repeating or noting down important things to keep in mind, use our short-term memory as a log of where we’re at.

Introduce to this another piece of work, demanding just as much of our mental resources, and our efficiency starts to deteriorate. What we think we’re doing is multitasking, but what’s really happening is we’re switching between two tasks continuously, with lapses of information in between. This phenomenon has been aptly named the attentional blink. It describes the lapse in attention which occurs when we try to process two things occuring at around the same time. Studies have shown that people’s attention consistently overlooks the second piece of information when focused on the first.

Switching between tasks is a total waste of time — yet we keep doing it

The mental dashboard previously mentioned, known in cognitive psychology as working memory, is unlike any dashboard you may have come into contact with at work. It lives in a human, and humans are often imprecise, and prone to getting bored and losing track of things. The space of working memory is relatively small. To give you an estimate of its size, on average people can only hold 7 numbers in working memory. When you memorize a phone number, you begin by holding each number in working memory, and through repetition or note taking, code it into short term, and later, long term memory.

Let’s apply this to the context of multitasking. It’s a tuesday, 11am, and you’re hard at work. You’re working on two projects simultaneously. As you’re writing content for one, you’re keeping the next few lines of text in working memory, and the overall structure of the rest of the document in short term memory.

Along comes project number two, and you have to a) erase your working memory to make room for a new set of things to keep in mind, and b) make new space in short term memory for a whole new conceptual picture of an entirely different piece of work.

Here’s the problematic bit — that whole concept you had in mind for the first project, the one you kept in short term memory, is likely not going to be remembered because of interference with a whole new mentally demanding task.

Why to-do lists suck

Blowing up the little intricacies of how our brains process information, let’s think about how this applies to our working style. If you’re like me, you’re probably working on several things at the same time, and you probably have a lengthy to-do list every day and week of the year.

Your to-do list ensures you will get things done. But it’s a way of doing things backwards. It’s a sort of protection, against forgetfulness or fear that something will be missing in the final output. But if you structure your day by a concept of inching things forward, are you really prioritising great quality work?

Research shows that we can still perform well if we use our best and therefore more mentally demanding strategies for getting work done, but with increasing demand on our brains because of multiple tasks, we often switch to worse strategies that decrease performance. “Ticking things off” is one of those. When we have multiple things that compete for our attention, we’re often unable to handle working through each one fully, and our performance suffers.

To-do lists also bottleneck our attention, and force us to solely focus on what we’re defining as important. Sounds useful, doesn’t it? Research shows that when we bottleneck our attention, we switch off our awareness and receptivity to other things which may be equally important. In short, we’re not focusing on doing our best on the task at hand, in a receptive and open-minded way. We’re focusing on a set of few tasks we wrote down for ourselves. There is no room for out-of-the-blue realisations, creative problem solving, flexible thinking, and other performance boosting mental processes which we can achieve through flow — a state where we are fully present with the work on our hands, and can create something meaningful and with creative value.

Things you can do today to stop multitasking

Realise it’s gonna suck at first, but it will pay off in the long run

One of the main reasons we keep on multitasking is the constant reminder that things have got to get done. Yes, we all know things have got to get done. But to do those things really well, and discover a whole new and exciting way to create great work, you will have to, at some point, scrap your current tactic and do the hard work of creating a new and better one that will pay off in the long run.

Trust yourself

To-do list mentality is a mentality of maximising output, not maximising quality. To make a change, you need to believe that you are capable of producing great quality work. It has to start with that. Too stressed to trust yourself? Start small: set a daily intention to give yourself more flexibility, and to focus less and less on disaster prevention tactics like to-do lists.

Prioritise

No, this isn’t about prioritising tasks. That would create a whole new list. Prioritise your time. Are you working on a major report? Set aside the time you will able to devote to that today, and stick to it. Take short breaks to check your email and put out other fires, but do not accept distractions from other, less important demands. If you’ve got a backlog of menial stuff to sort through, set aside an hour for just that that doesn’t interfere with your other priorities.

Say no to things that can wait

Everyone will always be on tight deadlines, and everyone will perceive their deadlines as more pressing than those of others. If you do not set your priorities, and don’t defend your time, someone will come in and rearrange it for you.

Schedule your time well

Do you have that hour in the day that’s just always been your sweet spot for doing great work? Use it to your advantage. That is the time at which working on your main priority for the day should peak at.

Know where to find flow

Finding flow is an abstract concept, because every person will find flow differently depending on their personality and the task at hand. One of the main features of finding flow in working is a sense of timelessness and full presence, so having plenty of unstructured time and reducing distractions (eg. other things on your to-do list) are going to be key. Think about what helps you achieve flow. If you can remember the last time you found flow, what was the experience like? Did it include background music? Did it include silence? What are the immediate things that you associate it with?

Plan for days / weeks, rather than hours

For all the reasons stated above, time constraints and task constraints will narrow your attention and likely, the increase mental burden from competing pieces of work will reduce your performance. Try to plan in blocks that prioritise quality time spent working on tasks, rather than trying to inch multiple projects forward to tick off a sense of progress. If you’ve got three main things to do this week, try to plan two days for each. If there’s multiple deadlines to keep in mind, stick to planning for the AM and the PM.

Plan for success

Don’t set a plan with objectives like “report complete”. Do plan for a final deadline to optimise your time, but also think about what success on the task will look or feel like. If you feel the need to create a list, go ahead and do it. Creating a list which sets a goal like crafting a report that’s “clear, engaging, creative, and action-oriented” is going to get you much further than planning for a “complete report” by a narrow, overly-defined set of criteria. Remember, having a mental bottleneck will constrain you rather than engage you.

Experiment

Challenge yourself to change something about the way you complete projects. Find a small one to start with and plan to produce value rather than output by predefined criteria. Keep in mind what this project will need to include, but let yourself be led by finding flow and delivering something unique, engaging and high quality. If it doesn’t work for you, feel free to dust off that to-do list, and be happy that at least you explored a new way of working.