A Deep Dive Into Multitasking
If you've been listening to my podcast regularly you've probably heard me talk about some of the problems with multitasking and how it's actually just task-switching - that is that our brains can't actually do two things at once, so they are just quickly switching back and forth between the two tasks (or maybe 3 or 4 tasks at once).
There are three kinds of multitasking:
Classic Multitasking - this is where we're trying to perform more than one task at the same time → think texting while driving
Rapid Task Switching - this is where we're just going from one task to another in quick succession. This one is a bit more amorphous but also very classically ADHD where we're switching from tab to tab and checking something on our phone and then clearing some stuff off our desk. We're not trying to do things at the same time, but we're also don't have a clear direction of where we're going
Interrupted Task Switching - this is where we're interrupted from one task and switch what we're doing before we finish our first task → this one can be harder to notice because it's what's keeping us busy all day and putting out fires. It's getting that text while you're working on a report and then having to reply to the text before you get back to it. It may not feel like multitasking, but it very much is.
Those are the three types of multitasking that we are going to regularly be encountering and it's important that we understand the difference between these types of multitasking because they are all going to need different solutions to overcome them. For example, with interrupted task switching, that mainly comes from interruptions, so we can work on that by limiting notifications and setting up a time where we're not going to get interrupted. But that's not going to help that much with rapid task switching multitasking where we're just jumping from one task on our to-do list to the next without regard to grouping any kind of tasks together.
And here's the trick, sometimes multitasking isn't the worst thing in the world, for example, what about the things where we can actually do simultaneously. I often go on walks and listen to podcasts - that's two things at once. Or folding laundry while watching TV. Again two things at the same time. So what's the deal here? Am I suffering some sort of unseen consequences when I'm doing things where I'm doing these things that are so easy to do at the same time?
Well, it depends actually.
When we're talking about multitasking we're usually thinking about doing two cognitive tasks at the same time - that is two things that we'd need to sustain our attention on. Talking on the phone while answering emails or maybe watching YouTube videos while scrolling Instagram on our phones.
With something like walking, that's not actually a cognitive task we need sustained attention for, and this actually kind of cool because what's happening is that our spinal cord has these neural circuits that can generate patterns of flexion and extension that make us walk - basically our spinal cord can handle walking on its own without our brains. Now there might be some sort of cost to unloading these patterns from our brain, but they tend to be too small for us to notice. Although to be fair, we also have issues where people are so intent on looking at their phones that they are oblivious to the world around them... accidentally walking into a signpost or into a hole because we're focused on our phones is probably something that we're going to want to avoid. Of course, at that point we're also using our eyes for something other than watching where we're putting our feet, if we're just listening to podcasts on our walk, we're probably fine.
As for folding laundry and watching TV, well that is going to have a cost, albeit one we might be willing to pay. We're not going to be as focused on our folded laundry so it'll likely take a little longer and we're also not going to be as focused on the TV so we're probably going to miss something from our show. But the costs here are going to be fairly small. It doesn't take a lot of cognitive capacity to fold laundry so I'm going to be able to follow along with what I'm watching easily enough. Of course, there will be times where I'm trying to get something from the bottom of the laundry basket and it's stuck to something else and then I'll have to do a little mental juggling to both unstick the shirt and follow along with the TV. Am I going to miss something? Possibly, I might not see a little smirk that is foreshadowing an event later in the series, or I might not miss anything. But again, the cost here is going to be small.
If on the other hand, I was watching TV and scrolling Instagram, I'm actually way more likely to miss more stuff cause takes way more cognitive capacity to read through the posts and process the pictures on Insta. However, it's also not going to feel like I'm missing anything because, well I don't know what I missed. So maybe put the phone away for those things you might actually like to pay attention to - you know, like other people.
One of the interesting aspects of multitasking is that people who think they're good at multitasking tend to be worst at actually doing it. While it can seem like multitasking is a time-saver, it actually takes more time for us to complete two tasks at the same time than it would had we just been single-tasking. And I know this is a hard pill to swallow because it's just not something our brain processes well.
What better way to get our brains to accept some of these ideas than to have a practical exercise to do. I found an amazingly easy experiment to try this out with... so easy you could try it out now, it doesn't take more than a couple of minutes to complete.
You're going to need a timer for this:
First time yourself counting 1-26 out loud - we're not trying to go for a speed record here, just go at a comfortable pace.
Next time your self reciting the alphabet, A to Z - again, go at a comfortable pace, I know I can say slur my words and say the whole thing in a couple of seconds that's not our goal here
For our last task, interlace them while saying them out loud, so A1, B2, C3, D4 ect…
Okay, how'd you do: I got 12 and 13 seconds for the first two tasks and then a whopping minute and 41 seconds for the second task. So it took me four times as long to do the combined version - admittedly I did this right after lunch so I might have been a bit groggy.
Also while I was doing this I was thinking, hey you know what I really know how to do both of those first two tasks... I mean I've been singing my ABC's while washing my hands the whole pandemic, so yeah, I have a lot of practice doing those tasks
This led me to think about how I'd fare on tasks that I wasn't so well versed on, so I came up with an alternate version of the experiment.
For trial number two I used a similar concept, except now I did the ABC's backward, so my ZYXWs, and then to make counting a little trickier I started at 52 and counted down by two's
and then combined those two ideas for the third trial I did the interlacing idea again so, Z52, Y50, X48, W46
That test was a heck of a lot harder on my brain... because while I have practiced my ABCs backward before... I mean who hasn't gotten bored and decided to try and learn the alphabet backward right? It still didn't come naturally to me even though I knew everything in the test. So in this version, I got 46 seconds on the ABCs and 37 seconds on the counting exercise for a combined total of 1 minute and 23 seconds... and then on the interlaced version, I got two minutes and 19 seconds.
Both sets of results tell an interesting story because while I started off doing my modified version because I was too practiced with just counting and singing my ABCs, I also realized that practiced tasks are the ones we're most likely to feel like we can multitask well with. Of course, when I'm actually trying to multitask I'm not going to be interlacing my tasks quite as much as I did with that experiment - I'd more like do something like singing the ABC's A-L then count to 15 come back and do M-Z and then finish counting up to 26. None the less that is going to take me longer to do than if I had just finished one task and then moved onto the next one.
Our problem often comes from the fact that we don't know how long we're actually supposed to take doing certain things. When I'm answering an email I don't have a good idea of how long it should take, so if I try and multitask and end up taking twice as long on that email, I'm not really going to notice because for me that's just how long it took to do it. When I'm trying to multitask I'm creating a mental strain that I'm not really noticing. I mean when I was doing the interlaced alphabet and counting I knew it was taking more effort, but in no way did it feel like it was taking 4 times as long.
As for our second set of results... well that's also an interesting case study. While it did take longer for me to do the interlaced counting, it was only about 1.6 times as long as the combined time for the other tasks. I was kind of surprised by the results because I was expecting to see a more amplified result, although it makes some sense when we're comparing three unpracticed skills. What I really took away from that last test was how mentally straining it was to combine those two tasks... it felt like I never had a grasp of where I was at - and I kept wondering if I made a mistake, it might be interesting to have someone record what you were saying and see if it matched up with reality. I imagine that had I been writing it down myself it would have been easier for me to process because I could see what I had just previously put down and wouldn't have had to keep that in my active recall while searching for the next number and letter combination.
If you didn't try out the experiment I definitely suggest that you do, it was more eye-opening for me than I expected. In my head, I felt like I had a pretty good grasp of the concept that task switching increases the amount of time things take, but boy howdy, it was made all the more clear when I got to actually try it out myself.
Multitasking often appears to be a harmless function of modern society now - this is especially true with our now constant companions - our phones. I'm trying to think of the last time I didn't have my phone with me... pretty much the only time that happens is when I forget it when I go off on a walk, but if I'm leaving the house for any extended period of time it is always with me.
And yeah, we did discuss that sometimes multitasking isn't so bad - listening to music and doing homework, not so much of an issue... texting while driving on the other hand can have dire consequences... or not. And that is part of the insidious nature of multitasking, often it is hard for us to really see the issue when there isn't a clear consequence. There have been many an instance where I was driving and decided to just quickly answer a text, most of the time my biggest issue is that I get honked at because I was sending a quick text off at a stoplight and didn't see the light turn green. Unfortunately, this creates a false sense that I'm just not one of those people who really get distracted while I'm texting. Let me be clear here, in this case, I am not special - you are not special - texting while driving is incredibly dangerous because we're far more distracted than we think.
So what's going on here with our brains - what is going on here that makes it so that texting and driving is so dangerous.
If we go back to our earlier definitions, when we're texting and driving we're looking at that classic definition of trying to do two things at once. But the whole multitasking idea is a misnomer - all multitasking is actually task switching - our brain can't actually process two things at once, so even with this idea of doing two things at once our brain is just quickly shifting back and forth between things. So quickly that we don't even tend to notice it - but that shifting attention means we're not paying nearly as much attention to either thing.
This is a big deal while driving - studies have found that it takes us approximately 5 seconds to read the average text message... and if our brain is focused on reading for even one second, that means during that time what we aren't doing is driving, we're just letting that hulk of metal keep propelling itself of its own accord - that's kind of a sobering perspective for me, that when I'm texting and driving, what I'm actually doing is driving, then texting and then driving again. During this time the car doesn't stop, I'm just not in control of it. That's scary stuff. If I'm going 30 mph that's 44 feet per second, which means if it takes me 5 seconds to read a text, I travel roughly 220 feet - and at any point during that 220 feet I might have to react to something, but if I'm distracted it's going to take me that much longer to react.
Of course as I mentioned, usually I'm just doing these things at stop lights - where's the harm in that?
Well firstly, it gives us that sense that what we're doing isn't that bad. That having our phone ready and within reach while driving is A-OKAY. But when we do that we're just normalizing things that we may not really want to be normalizing. Remember we have ADHD and we’re impulsive. When the phone is right there it is hard for us to ignore. And even if we’re ignoring notifications we’re still going to feel like we need to check because, well, what if it’s important?
And it also enters us into that third kind of task switching - the interrupted task switching, where we get interrupted from one thing and switch tasks. And our worry hear is context switching - let's say you hear that notification while you're driving along. But you're being good, you don't check it... except now our brain is wondering about that notification... is it actually important. Okay, well we'll check it at the next stop light... well fuck me... all greens. Okay, finally got to a place I can look... oh man, that's just a wall of text, okay I'll just read it real quick and oh back to green.
We can easily see how distracting those thought patterns are here - and what if instead we had a chance to start answering but the light changed before we finished answering. Well now we're either going to finish what we wanted to write while we're driving or we're going to have to let those thoughts float around in our head while we're waiting for the next red light.
And let's go back to this idea of task switching - which is just that since we can't do two things simultaneously we switch back and forth. When we're mentally juggling all of these different tasks we're also dividing our attention. When we switch from one task to another it takes our brain time to refocus on what we were originally doing - so when we're texting at a stoplight we're switching our context from our driving to texting and then we believe that we can go right back to driving. But it can actually take our brains a while to catch up and while we're doing that we're not nearly as focused on what we should be doing - driving.
And taking this idea out of this example, we have the same problem all day long. With ADHD we can have a lot of trouble with transitions from one thing to the next and that's all about context switching - we need to give ourselves a chance to get ready for the next thing and with all the distractions that multitasking bring it makes it harder and harder to make that happen.
Now I'm going to acknowledge that there is still a lot more to say about multitasking because it's a complicated topic and we're bound to have lots of questions - especially about how to get us to stop. I'll be back next week with part 2 in this series and hopefully, I can get some of those questions answered.
This Episode’s Top Tips
There are three kinds of multitasking - Classic Multitasking where we're trying to perform more than one task at the same time. Rapid task switching where we're just going from one task to another in quick succession. And interrupted task switching where we're interrupted from one task and switch what we're doing without finishing what we were doing.
When we're talking about multitasking we're primarily concerned with doing two cognitive tasks at the same time that require sustained attention. This means something like walking and listening to a podcast is fine to do because neither carries a huge cognitive load.
We often try to multitask with things that we're already fairly practiced at, but this means that we're going to suffer even more of a penalty as we try to combine doing them with other things.
Don't text and drive - or even just play with your phone while behind the wheel. When we're mentally juggling all of these different things we're dividing our attention and it takes time for us to refocus on what we need to be doing.
Mentioned in this Episode
Multitasking experiment - https://www.learningscientists.org/blog/2017/7/28-1
