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An arrest request has fallen into my box. A quarter of the British, a new study says, are emails from Loo because they are so printed at the time. “Relaxation is a thing of the past,” shouts the press release, which says a third of the respondents are still working on their evening phones – “while watching their television programs.” Ah.
With “Overwhelm” a feature of modern life, reports such as this imply that excited workers are forced to multitask to hold on top of balloon requirements. But when 13 percent of respondents admit that they have made a weekly online store during a business meeting, I wonder what happened to Saturday – and their boss. Have we reached the peak delay, in which meetings are now a real -life interpretive helper – walking the dog and cleaning the house, whom the respondents in this study had done during work calls?
Multitasking supporters want to remind us that Archimedes had his moment Eureka while in the bathroom. But he was letting him wander as he sinks. He was not sitting there with his camera, trying not to spray while others fought.
I recently asked for a painter for a quote for some decorations. We talked as he took a look at different walls. Since the pandemia, he told me, he has been blazed by how often he arrives in a house to find adult men sitting on their sofas, looking at sport in the middle of the day as he is vaguely intercepted on their keyboards . This puts a new complexion in “excessive work”.
These days, if you do only one thing at a time you are thought to be a plodder. But 20 years of rehearsal tells us that changing tasks makes most people overwhelmed. A University of Utah study since 2006 found that speaking on the phone while driving is as dangerous as drunk: it slows down reactions. The same team has recently reported that car “infotainment” systems are even more dangerous than phones in terms of distraction.
Our brains are mostly wires to do one thing at the same time. Even walking and conversation begins to become complicated when we grow old. This is not to say that life should be a monotonous sequence. Many workers enjoy doing the tasks, according to the Center for Attention Studies at King’s College London, and can be positive. Indeed, “interconnection” – the passing between topics, then returning to them later – is all rage in schools as a proven examination technique.
But increasing levels of anxiety means that it is important to turn the conversation to concentrate. The difficulty of concentration is very much related to some of the anxiety disorders recognized by the American Psychiatric Association. And we tend to overestimate our ability for multitask. In fact, those who are more prone to fraud should do the least: because studies show that they are more impulsive and have less executive control.
I’m afraid to fall into that latter group, but recently I found two simple hacks. I tried to check email only twice a day, but it doesn’t fit my personality or my work life. Instead, I am back in writing a list to do. The existence of the list releases my brain from anxiety – as long as the tasks are in detail enough. And the use of pen and paper seems to crush it deeper into my subconscious. This is supported by new research that reveals that we make more detailed brain connections when writing than when writing. These links are essential for memory formation – and this makes it necessary to keep children going handwriting.
I’m also trying what Cal Newport, in his book Slow productivitycalls it a “attractive system”. In essence, you ruthlessly focus on your three main projects and avoid as much as possible premature communication, meetings about meetings and messages related to meetings related to subsequent projects. Only when you have finished one of your first three, you attract another up to that place.
We will all have different versions of this system – and I think it can simply be called “Focus”. But following my version has made me reflect how often the difference is lost among the work that actually generates income, moves things forward and makes sense; and the work that is a process. By which I mean pre-accommodation, compliance training module, the ever-returning emails chain “answer everyone” etc. The first type of work is much more satisfying. The second may be the kind that office employees report by doing in dog walking and toilet – and what my new decorator friend says he is happy to have less in his physical work.
Such tasks of the process, I doubt, are more enjoyable if they are done on a background of music, lyrics, movement or intermittent control of the football result. The problem is that people passing between multiple channels – called heavy media multitasaskers by Stanford researchers – exhibit worse memory and low executive control, even when focusing on a single job.
It turns out that there are some “supertasker”, those who are able to treat multiple tasks without losing efficiency. In brain scans, this group exhibits less brain activity, no more, when additional tasks are added. Unfortunately, only about 2 percent of us are in that category. So it would be dearer to ourselves, and our employers, to admit that the attention spaces are not endless and treat them carefully.
camilla.cavendish@ft.com
