--Do you ever listen to recordings of teleclasses you were too busy to attend live? Instead of sitting, pen poised to take notes as if you were in a classroom, do you figure you'll save time by doing data entry or writing articles or blog posts while you listen? And if you do, have you ever noticed that the recording fades into the background and you are 20 minutes into it with no idea what any of the speakers have said? (A friend of mine calls this Teleclass Hypnosis.)

--Have you ever been instant messaging while trying to answer email or talk on the phone? It seems like a good way to do the "two birds/one stone" routine until you tell the person on the phone the answer to the question the person on Instant Messaging just asked. And heaven forbid if you IM with two people at once and find yourself confusing your windows. Yikes!

Information overload and high pace expectations keep us ridiculously busy—we're expected to read everything, listen to everything and respond to everyone NOW. In addition to keeping abreast of email, voicemail, slow-mail, project updates, client follow-through and industry trends…there’s the Internet, 24-hour news, weekly presidential debates…and SPAM! You may have school information (yours or your children's) and life information (if you feel like you have time for a life), and there's a magazine or industry journal pile-up threatening to make the IRS re-classify your profession as "newsstand operator".

There’s a lot of information to keep with, especially if you’re going to keep up to date with all you need to keep your family healthy and safe and your clients or customers informed. Information overload stresses us out, because we start to feel like we have to get and pay attention to all of it, which makes it hard to focus on ANY of it.

So then we try to MULTI-TASK to improve efficiency. Multi-tasking is a defense mechanism against falling behind due to information overload. Throughout the 1980's and 1990's, multi-tasking was touted as a pathway to efficiency, but recent studies show that multi-tasking actually makes things worse.

Studies in NeuroImage (by Dr. Marcel Just, co-director of the Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh) and the Journal of Experimental Psychology, and research at the University of Michigan and the University of California all report that multi-tasking wastes time and leads to distraction, errors and memory lapses.

For example, a 2005 study by Australian researchers in the British Medical Journal found that people talking on cell phones while driving were four times more likely to have car accidents resulting in hospitalization than other motorists.

Closer to home, they’ve found that this is not merely correlation but causation, and that people consistently perform better and faster when tasks are done successively rather than simultaneously.

Rene Marois, PhD, associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at Vanderbilt University, reports that what happens during multi-tasking is a kind of bottleneck in the prefrontal cortex of the brain that forces people to address problems one after another rather than simultaneously, even if they’re doing everything so quickly that they perceive it as being simultaneous.

Various research shows that the brain goes through a selection process for choosing a new activity whereby it turns off the mental rules needed to do the first task, turns on the mental rules needed to do the second task, and then orients itself to the conditions necessary for the new task. You're brain just can't handle giving full attention to two things simultaneously…even if we're tricked into thinking it can.

Dan Bobinsky's Workplace Excellence quotes Robert Croker, Ed.D., chair of the Human Resource Training and Development department at Idaho State University:

"It's a common misconception is that a brain is like a computer. A computer is designed to multitask. A human brain is not designed to function optimally in a multitask environment."

Worst of all, the research shows that switching between tasks means it can take four times longer to finish any given project or task. Considering we're multi-tasking in order to save time and be more efficient, and considering the research shows that multi-tasking leads to WASTED time, distraction, errors and memory lapses, perhaps this research should convince us to UNI-task from now on?

We've come to believe that being ridiculously busy means we're getting more done, but it's not true. So, let's share ideas for how we can all increase focus and limit multi-tasking. To start us off:

--Have a fixed scheduled for when you are in the office, such that you will only check email certain times of the day (9a, 1p and 4p, for example).

--If the idea of not being tethered to your email makes you nervous, set a timer for 50 minutes past the hour, and turn off your new-message alerts. (If necessary, close your email software altogether.) Then, only check and respond to your email once the alarm goes off. If someone's issue is truly urgent…they'll call.

--Turn off your instant messenger program unless you are just socializing or you are IMing for work. If it's the latter, change your IM status to a customized status message -- something firm but friendly, like "In A Meeting" seems more polite than "Busy".

--Do not talk on your cell phone while driving, even if you have a hands-free mechanism. Have you ever noticed that while you're driving and trying to locate an address of somewhere you've never been, you reach down to lower the volume on the radio? That's an instinctive reaction—you know you can't pay attention to two things at once. Trust the research, and trust yourself. If you feel like you HAVE to take a call, pull over to the side of the road or into a parking lot, pull out your notepad to help you remember key thoughts, and then continue through your day…in one piece!

This is just the tip of the iceberg. I hope we'll be continuing this conversation for a while…when we all have time to concentrate on the subject. :-)

So, the next time you're driving, put down the cell phone; when you're talking with your kids, stop sorting the mail or writing out the bills. The comedian Stephen Wright would say "I'd hate to have it all. Where would you put it?" Well, remember, "You can do it all all, BUT NOT ALL AT THE SAME TIME."

Julie

P.S. Although most original scholarly journals are only available through a paid subscription, abstracts and articles in mainstream media can provide further information on this subject, if you're so inclined. Start with the links above, and here:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-06/aps-wwm060704.php
http://web.mit.edu/bcs/nklab/media/pdfs/JiangKanwisherJOCN03-2.pdf

Also, the "scholarly" tab under the MORE menu at Google yields terrific journal results, although many are subscription-only if you want more than an abstract.
--
Julie Bestry
Best Results Organizing
"Don't apologize. Organize!"
organize@juliebestry.com
Visit http://www.juliebestry.com to save time and money, reduce stress and increase your productivity

Private Reply to Julie Bestry (new win)