That’s my new mantra…”Stick to the goat at hand.” It comes from this article on Oprah.com, and you’ll have to read it to understand why I’m using it several times daily to remind myself not to multitask.
I guess I thought that multitasking was a necessity for me, and since I did it so much I must be really good at it. Well, with all of the recent brain-study (thanks to my public speaking coach), I started to pay attention to what happens when I think I’m multitasking.
Yesterday I was in a meeting with two people and another one on a speaker phone. Whenever there were a few moments that the conversation didn’t involve me, I found myself drawn to my phone so I could check my email. If you had asked me before, I’d tell you that I was able to listen to what was being said and simultaneously skim my email, but what actually happened was that I checked out of the conversation for the few moments I spent on my email. It happens to me all the time when I’m reading…I start thinking about something else and I realize that I haven’t absorbed anything in the last 4 paragraphs.
I thought I was driven only by the pressure of being overbooked and the desire to be as productive as possible, but according to the goat article, it’s my brain’s fault (again):
“It’s what we all know as multitasking—trying to pay attention to numerous things simultaneously. We claim to do so in the name of efficiency, but some scientists now think the real attraction to multitasking has a lot to do with dopamine, a feel-good neurochemical released when we’re stimulated by new things (say, an unread e-mail message). As Adam Gazzaley, MD, PhD, assistant professor of neurology, physiology, and psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, explains, “We’re all novelty junkies”—and multitasking, especially the electric kind, is a great way to get a fix.”
I think I may be a dopamine addict.
Admitting you have a problem is the first step, right? As part of my ongoing self-improvement initiative, I’m going to attempt to stop multitasking – at least the kind that tries to use your brain for two different things. I still think I can load the dishwasher and talk on the phone, or fold laundry and listen to a conference call. But other than that, I’m going to stick to the goat at hand.
P.S. Here’s a good post about multitasking from the Harvard Business Review’s blog.
