A multitasker’s guide to regaining focus
Multitasking is just the way many of us live. How often do you text while stuck in traffic, lose track of a podcast while doing chores, or flutter between the news and your inbox?
“We get stuck in this multitasking trap even without realizing that we’re doing it,” said Nicole Byers, a neuropsychologist in Calgary, Alberta, who specializes in treating people with burnout.
There are a few reasons for our collective habit, she added. Most of us avoid boredom if we can, Byers explained, and multitasking is a reliable way to ward it off.
There’s also a lot of pressure to do it. “How many times have we seen a job posting that says, ‘Must be an excellent multitasker’?” she asked. “Our modern world — where so many of us spend most of the day on screens — really forces our brain to multitask.”
The fact remains that we’re not great at doing it, and it’s not great for us. But there are ways we can be smarter in our approach.
Your brain on multitasking
First, “multitask” itself is typically a misnomer. According to experts, it’s not possible to do two things at once — unless we can do one without much thinking (like taking a walk while catching up with a friend).
“Usually, when people think they’re multitasking, they’re actually switching their attention back and forth between two separate tasks,” said Gloria Mark, a professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, and author of “Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity.”
Let’s consider what happens when you engage in a single task like cooking dinner. From the moment you decide what to make, different regions of your brain, collectively referred to as the cognitive control network, collaborate to make it happen, said Anthony Wagner, a professor of psychology at Stanford and the deputy director of the university’s Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute.
This network includes areas of your brain that are involved in executive function, or the ability to plan and carry out goal-oriented behavior. Together they create a mental model of the job at hand and what you need to accomplish it. Your brain might do this, Wagner said, by drawing on both external and internal information, like the ingredients in your fridge or your memory of the recipe.
Mark compared this process to drawing on a mental whiteboard. But if your friend calls you to rant about her day, that whiteboard gets wiped clean. “Every time you switch your attention to a new task, your brain has to reorient itself,” she said.
If you know the dish like the back of your hand or your chat is nice and breezy, switching might be simple. But the more effort each task takes, the more your brain has to sort through competing information and separate goals.