3 Ways to stop multitasking dead

Are you annoyed when you’re in the middle of dinner and someone calls? That’s multitasking.

What about when you’re in the zone at your desk and someone interrupts you for a mundane reason. Yup, that’s multitasking also.

And yes — you’re creating something on your laptop and boom! A new Slack message pops up. By this time you’re really beginning to hate interruptions.

We’d consider all the above as “interruptions” more than multitasking which we mindfully do. But don’t get sucked in. They’re the same thing.

When we “multitask” we deliberately interrupt ourselves. Here’s how we can stop doing this:

Present one thing in your visual context

Use my notebook technique to only look at the next thing you want to do. Most task and list managers present 10 or more things for you to pick from. Try to expose only one at a time. Finish it, then expose the other thing.

Turn off interruptions

Disable email notifications. Setup slack so you only get popup notifications on the most important people. Turn on airplane mode for the 20–30 minutes you’re working on a task. You won’t die. Trust me.

Advertise that you don’t want to be disturbed

This could be going to a location where no one really knows you — like a coffee shop. Or putting on a huge pair of headphones if you’re in the office. Hunch over your work. If someone tries to talk to you pretend you don’t hear them for a truly long time.

So let’s think about it. Even computers do one thing at a time. They just do one thing at a time really really fast. So we call it “multitasking”.

We all suck at it. Let’s stop doing it.