Multitasking Exercise

On my resume, not only did it used to say detail oriented, which it doesn't anymore, it also used to say, great multitasker, great at multitasking. You know, multitasking is a strength. Maybe Your resume or LinkedIn profile says that today. I would encourage you to take that off. I took it off my resume because multitasking is a myth. None of us are great at it. So what do I mean by, like, none of us are great at multitasking? You might be saying to yourself, that is my strength. I am good at it. And I don't mean to poke you too hard on this, but multitasking is a myth. Now, task switching, that's what we're talking about. So multitask, the ability to do more than one thing at any given moment can't be done. Your brain can only do one thing and then switch to another task. Sure, it can happen really fast, and it can seem like we're multitasking, but in reality, we're probably talking about, you know, being able to handle lots of different things at the, you know, in a day, but you're not doing it at the same time. We're task switching, and there's a cost to task switching. Now, some of us can switch tasks faster, and the cost is lower than others. For example, for me, I find that the cost of switching tasks is getting more and more difficult the older I get. I want to demonstrate to you the cost of task switching with a simple exercise. So what I want you to do is gather a pen and a piece of paper and some form of timer. Like on your phone, for example, you might have a stopwatch. Maybe you have a watch, I don't know. So piece of paper, pen or pencil, and some way to time yourself. And you can just pause here as you need to to get that. Okay, so in a moment, we're going to begin this activity together, and you're going to start timing yourself. What I want you to do is across the sheet of paper that you have, going from left to right in three columns. Feel free to draw those three columns. You're going to write the, the number one, then in the next column, the Roman numeral one, and then the Alphabet letter A. And then you're going to go back to the first column and Write the number 2, the Roman numeral 2, and the Alphabet letter B. You'll do this in that order for 10 cycles. So you'll write one Roman numeral, one, Alphabet letter A, number two, Roman numeral two, Alphabet letter B, and so on until you get it 10 times. So your very last row will be 10, Roman numeral 10. And then whatever the 10th letter of the Alphabet is, I don't know. And you'll time yourself, you'll time yourself for that. Okay, so whenever you're ready, I want you to pause this video again. You're doing them in row by rows. Don't try to do them by columns. Don't cheat. Time yourself doing it by rows. Okay, when you're ready, pause the video and you'll start that timer. Write it out. So stop the timer and then record that time. Okay? So do that first one. We're going to do this a second time. So get your three columns going. Create those three columns. And now you're going to do it the way your brain wanted you to do it, which is by column. So you'll same 10 cycles, same 10 cycles. But you're going to write 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Then Roman numeral 1, 2, 3, 4th, 5, 6, 7, eight, nine, 10, then Alphabet A, B, C, D to whatever the 10th letter the Alphabet is. Okay? So this is probably how your brain wanted to do it the first time. You'll time yourself. So go ahead and get ready. You'll get your stopwatch ready, pause the video and then do it by, by column. Now. Okay, so like, what did you recognize in those two scenarios? The first way, sort of task switching between, you know, numbers and Roman numerals and Alphabet. And then the second way, which was you were able to stay in the state of flow and do the 10 cycles of the numbers and the 10 cycles of the Roman numerals in the 10 cycles of the Alphabet. Like, how was that experience? Oftentimes I'll do this with people and they'll tell me that, you know, the first way took longer. Okay, so that's pretty obvious. The second way felt more natural. I was more comfortable in that state. Let me ask this, did you make any mistakes the first way? Did you make a mistake having to sort of go back and forth between the two and task switch between you? We find quality decreases when we're task switching. But let me ask you this. Did you feel any pressure, did you feel any pressure to get the thing done the first way when you were task switching? Oftentimes people will tell me, yeah, there's this, this strange sense of like, I'm getting frustrated. Yeah, no kidding. You were doing something and then a new priority boom popped in your queue and all of a sudden you're interrupting. I got to work on that. It's frustrating. So here's the takeaway. So when we're focused, when we're laser focused on a single task, the full column, we get it done faster, we get it done with higher quality, and the actual experience is better. It's better for us as people. So multitasking myth, task, switching reality. The less you switch tasks, the better you'll be and the better your teams will be.