The ‘good’ one is straightforward – you have many tasks do, you are practised at all of them, and each task can be done in small increments. Often these tasks are presented to you at random times. When I was a working stiff I could chair a conference call, take notes, read appropriate emails and and fire off IM chats with my people at the same time. Customers were impressed that within 30 seconds of the call ending the notes – and more importantly action points – were emailed out to all on the conference call. During the call I was ‘in the zone’, but importantly all of the skills I needed were well practised.

The ‘bad’ type is where you snatch up one distracting task to put off dealing with another less appealing task. Got a big report to write, well… let me check my email, go for a coffee, phone the boss, pick up the report, read my email again, decide to clean my monitor screen…. this is the sort of multitasking that productivity gurus rage against.

And sometimes total focus is needed on a single task no matter how skilled you are. If the task is complicated and has many competeing elements, or you are using new skills, then you need the tight focus.

Although it is not an exact analogy, I think your brain has a ‘maximum bandwidth’ for conscious tasks. In ‘good’ multitasking your brain has enough bandwidth to switch easily between tasks because much of the learned skills are being conducted unconsciously. Similarly, very demanding tasks require all your bandwidth, and you suffer when distractions snatch bandwidth away. You can be ‘in the zone’ in either case.

In ‘bad’ multitasking you are allowing yourself to be distracted and you are probably not using anything like your full capacity – and that is why the One Task Gurus are critical.

However, I also believe that the great things in life, that is to say, the things that we will look back on and be proud of…are the things that we truly appreciated, enjoyed and created…these are things that require a great degree of focus and dedication. Many cultural traditions focus on meditation as a tool for focusing the mind. Thousands of years ago scattered thoughts were a problem in the human condition and different rituals and approaches were devised to counter act this (meditation/yoga being just one), and that hasn’t changed in modern times.

For the vast majority of us, especially those of us that are reading and writing blogs with great veracity, we would do ourselves a favor by training our brains to do less parallel processing.

I wrote about this topic on my blog a while back.

Ravi

The sort of multi-tasking that incurs the ire of self-help/organization gurus (self-proclaimed or actual) is not – so far as I can tell – the same sort of multi-tasking you describe in this post. There’s a difference between having multiple balls in the air versus the ADD-like frenetic “must-always-be-in-motion” kind of multi-tasking which, for 99% of folks is genuinely counter-productive.

Perhaps your sort of multi-tasking is actually more like your philosophy of work … multiple streams of income (read: activity) each of which contributes to a larger, unified whole. If that thought is accurate, then perhaps you’re more of a “multi-streamer” than a “multi-tasker.”

What do you think?

I was a preschool teacher for years, too, which is another environment where multi-tasking saves your sanity. (:

Thanks for posting this. I’m checking into that book, and I greatly appreciate your tips. They’ll really come in handy for me in the new year when my wife starts working from home full-time and I’m managing her, the company, the cats, the kid, and the household all at once. (;

Multitasking works for me. It frees me up to do things that otherwise I wouldn’t have time for. It’s like solving a puzzle sometimes also (figuring out how to do multiple things well, and fast). I make the impossible look easy, which some people just use to place more demands on you, so I’ve learned to gently remind them of what I do or just say no.

It’s not for everyone, but for those of us that can. It’s a lot of fun and just makes more time for doing the things we love.