Singletask

One of the more helpful adages I’ve heard in a long time is, “Remember: you only have one word processor.”

I have no idea where I heard it, but I’m glad it stuck. I often find myself stuck in the middle of a task — or even worse, completely lost, having forgotten said task — entirely because I’ve neglected this wisdom. No matter how deeply I intend otherwise, I can’t “quickly bang out an email” while listening to a podcast.

As Steve Uzzell said, “Multitasking is merely the opportunity to screw up more than one thing at a time.”

The allure of being a good multitasker is almost irresistible. But we are mistaken to perceive principles like Brandon Middleton’s intentional congruence as permission to multitask. Brandon’s hack is to do one thing that advances two objectives; not two things at the same time.

In 2009, Stanford Professor Clifford Nass commissioned a study of over 250 students, to explore what distinguished self-proclaimed “multitaskers” from the rest. His conclusion? “The research is almost unanimous, which is very rare in social science, and it says that people who chronically multitask show an enormous range of deficits. They're basically terrible at all sorts of cognitive tasks, including multitasking.”

As Gary Keller says I’m his fantastic book, The ONE Thing, “Some have gone so far as to be proud of their supposed skill and have adopted it as a way of life. But it’s actually a ‘way of lie,’ for the truth is multitasking is neither efficient nor effective.”

It wouldn’t be so bad if we weren’t so delusional about our own vulnerability. As Nass observed from his interactions with hundreds of research subjects, “The people we talked with continually said, ‘Look, when I really have to concentrate, I turn off everything and I am laser-focused.’ And unfortunately, they've developed habits of mind that make it impossible for them to be laser-focused. They're suckers for irrelevancy. They just can't keep on task.”

Which is to say, admitting we’ve got a problem is the first step to recovery.

How do we set ourselves up to “singletask,” as I call it? A couple of tactics that have been helpful for me:

Change space. Sometimes my messy space is just too good at triggering fresh thoughts. Ironically, sometimes the last thing I need is a fresh thought, but rather, just to hold onto the old one for long enough to execute. Yes, that’s a seeming-contradiction, and I don’t mind one bit: changing work spaces really helps.

Turn off notifications. I killed the red email alert bubble, years ago. I turned off my phone ringer… and the vibrate function. This is one of the greatest things I’ve ever learned. Occasionally, I do miss important alerts, but the vast majority of the time, I preserve precious attention.

Take off my watch. The last thing I need in the middle of a meeting, or a dinner, or a coffee catch-up, is a random alert coming to my watch — often, it seems, to remind me to be mindful or breathe. As much as I appreciate the interruption (especially given the phone setup mentioned above), there are times it doesn’t serve me. So I physically take it off to protect my focus.

Related: Scale Yourself
Related: Treasure the Mess
Related: Embrace Contradictions

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