What’s the most likely thing you’ll hear when you complain to others about being overwhelmed? Besides telling me to suck it up, I find the most common advice I get: Learn to multi-task.
I’ve tried it. While I am productive for a while, I find there’s a sink hole that starts to form from the moment I think of more than one thing at a time. By the end I think that productivity is for the crazed. I’m almost certain that’s true after watching self described “good multi-taskers” on a busy day.
I know I’m not alone cause there’s been for some time a movement against multi-tasking. This camp are the focusers, the uni-taskers. Just one thing is their mantra. They argue that we evolved to do one thing at a time, no matter how digital we go, our bodies are forever aware of the singular need to run from a saber-tooth tiger.
But what happens when I am in a situation where I really must do more than one activity? Just ignore one, focus on the other? Sometimes I have to hold a baby, or chase a hare, while running from the saber-tooth tiger. I am sure we’re going to see a swing back to multi-tasking as the uni-taskers realize they sometimes need to juggle.
I believe there’s a better way. Both multi-tasking and uni-tasking are ways to make decisions for you, maybe because you don’t want to, or haven’t learned to. The better way is to learn to choose how to focus your mental energy based on the needs of the situation. It’s a grown up thing that I don’t see many grown ups doing.
Momentalum is mental momentum. It’s hard to change my mind once it gets going on a certain track. I suppose that’s why routines work. Sleep leads to more sleep. Work to more work. Exercise to more exercise. This is why a blind loyalty to multi-tasking or uni-tasking can’t work–they both ignore the nature of momentalum. Multi-tasking tends to interrupt it, and uni-tasking tends to build it too strongly.
In my own experiments with controlling momentalum, I find I need these skills:
1. Meta-awareness of the situation. To direct momentum you need to know where it’s going and how much you need. You need a vision of the situation’s real conditions.
2. Cold start. This one is hard for me. You need to be able to get moving in a particular direction despite mood, or existing momentalum. It doesn’t have to be strictly cold. I cheat by using a tender box of starters. These are tricks like reading about the topic I’m going to be involved in, or saying to myself that I will do such and such activity for only 5 minutes.
3. Hard stop. Once momentum is up, you have to be able to turn on a dime, either redirecting it somewhere else, or cooling it down, depending on the situation.
It comes down to changing your mind at will. It’s hard. I think that’s mainly because we have such a loose grip on what exactly is going on in what we think of as “my mind.”
In any case, it’s also possible. Like any other skill, it just takes practice.
2 Comments
Good point…why is there all this emphasis on multitasking? I guess that our society demands it, but is it even necessary or optimal? While you are required to multitask a lot nowadays, I think that it is possible to brush by multitasking and minimize its presence in your life. Flexibility is a great skill to have and I think this article does a great job of emphasizing its importance.
Thanks, Dan. Maybe it’s so emphasized because it makes sense at first glance that doing more means more gets done. But that notion overlooks the trade-offs of multitasking. Like any tool, I guess, it has to be used for the right job.