The Myth of Multi-Tasking

I consider myself a pretty good multi-tasker. I always have fifteen or twenty things going. Always reading multiple books. Always thinking about not just the next thing to do, but several. My wife on the other hand, does one thing at a time. What she’s “on”, owns her. I often hear “Let’s don’t talk about that until I’m through with this.”

Now I learn there’s no such thing as multi-tasking. Our brains are wired so we can only focus on one thing at a time. All of us.  David Allen says it and backs it up in his book Getting Things Done.

The difference is how we switch from one thing to another. Some people switch quickly; others more slowly. The A.D.D. person (attention deficit disorder) switches so fast, he has a hard time focusing long enough to accomplish anything. On the other hand, the deliberate, highly-cautious, risk-averse, procrastination-prone person can stay on one thing until Jesus comes back. Sometimes people use one thing as a ‘reason to be’ but also as a ‘reason not to be’… (doing anything else)! Emotional/relational things require more ‘switching time’ than transactional/task-type things, in part because both the ‘thinker/logical’ left and “feeler/emotional’ right sides of the brain are engaged .

So if our brains can only work on one thing at a time, what do we do?

First, we need a place to ‘park’ stuff that flashes into our minds and we’re not ready to think about. The common wisdom is to write it down. I tell my mentees to have a ‘to do’ list nearby when they’re praying because their minds and the enemy will throw all sorts of random stuff to distract them from conversing with the Father. Writing stuff down has an amazing effect on our brains. It’s almost like we’ve started on the task just because we wrote it down.

The second thing is to schedule ourselves and the stuff that’s on our minds. Writing it down is step one. Deciding if it’s worth spending time on and then scheduling it…well, that’s the ‘biggie’. People have different I.Q.s, banks account balances, and skill sets, but we all get the same amount of time…24 hours… every day. How we spend our time will go a long way in determining the meaning we find in this life and the reward we receive in the next.

Just as God made some of us right-handed and some left, He made some with the ability to switch between tasks more quickly than others. Work with your “Divine Wiring”…not against it. Find work that matches your ‘switching’ speed. Adapt your plans and schedule yourself in harmony with the way He made you.

Question : Have you ever felt inferior because you do one thing at a time and don’t ‘multi-task’? Or felt like a failure because you ‘jump around’ and struggle to focus? Tell us about it here……..