The Point

The books-on-the-nightstand syndrome

Well, I should know better. Multi-tasking is not productive. We should avoid it.

After all, the protagonist of my most recent book “Be Fast Or Be Gone”, Mike Knight, explains to a group of scientists why it is better to focus on the task at hand instead of multitasking. He uses the books-on-the-nightstand syndrome as an example. Here is how he expresses his view, “Say I have ten books to read, each with two hundred pages. If I read twenty pages per day and I multitask, I’ll have read twenty pages of each book after ten days of reading. And I probably don’t have a clue what’s happening in any of them. After twenty days, I’ll be forty pages into each book, and I’ll finish them all somewhere between days ninety-one and one-hundred. And since I don’t have a perfect memory, in all likelihood, I will have to go back and remind myself of what I’ve read. Going back over material I’ve already read is what I call switching costs. Switching costs in the real world can be even higher. They can easily make up twenty to thirty percent of the whole task. But, if I read in a focused way, I will have read all of my first book by day ten, I will finish my second book on day twenty. At the end of day ninety I will have read nine out of ten books and be ready to start my tenth. I won’t have any redundant reading to do. I won’t have any switching costs.”

There you have it. In the book, the group of scientists were convinced to apply focus on their own tasks going forward. The story goes on from there. And no, I won’t reveal more :)

I got called out on the books-on-the-nightstand example. A friend of mine asked me how I handle this for myself. I had to admit that I didn’t have fewer books on my personal nightstand during or even after I wrote the book. A quick inventory check resulted in a couple of Grisham thrillers, the project management handbook PMBOK (I read that when I really cannot find sleep), a training guide on taekwondo, the Heath brother’s “Made to stick”, Sarah Skwire’s “Writing with a Thesis”  and there is the iPad with its endless possibilities. In other words – I am guilty. 

And, I am not alone.  I stumbled upon a dialog on “Library Thing“. One of the members asked the question of how many books people were reading in parallel. The result is unsurprisingly clear. Most people read more than one book at a time. Some have as many as ten books in parallel “in the works”. Clearly, the book reading multitasker were in the majority. So, is single tasking for book reading impossible in the real life?

Well, not so fast. A blog  from Matthew Cornell suggests a system for reading lots of books in a short period time. Here is how the system goes:

“In a nutshell, he says he reads the book four times:

1. Table of contents, glossary, index.
2. Anything in bold, titles, and subtitles.
3. First line of every paragraph.
4. Entire book

Here’s the twist: Steps 1-3 should only take about 10 minutes. To capture relevant information he uses a note-taking scheme involving putting dots in margins, and cross-referencing them in an index in the book’s front. When done, he transfers them to a text file.”

Mike Knight would have been happy to meet Matthew Cornell. I am sure that they would get along  just fine. Having that said, my personal nightstand never will be much smaller than it is right now. That’s because the books on there are for fun. For job-related reading I am recommend-ing Mike’s/Matthew’s approach. In short: multitasking book reading like zapping through TV channels is for fun. If professional efficiency is called for we are better off  relentlessly applying single focus.

The Myth About Multitasking

To make it short: Humans are not good at multitasking.

Yet, knowledge workers in Corporate America are being asked to do exactly that. They are being expected to stay on top of incoming email exceeding easily hundred, in some cases hundreds a day. They are being asked to be reachable, go to meetings and handle multiple assignments with ease.  Multitasking is seen as a virtue. The ability to do so receives praise. However, multitasking comes at a significant cost.

In my work with knowledge workers, I find many examples that show that our brains cannot fully focus when we multitask. People take longer to complete tasks and are predisposed to error. When we attempt to complete many tasks at one time, or rapidly shift between them, errors go way up and it takes far longer. It takes more time to get the jobs done than if the tasks were done sequentially. This is largely because the brain is forced to restart and refocus. A study found that in the interim between each exchange, the brain makes no progress whatsoever. Therefore, multitasking people not only perform each task less suitabe, but lose time in the process.

Even computers are not good at multitasking as we find out when we open too many applications and windows on our desktop machines. Our system slows down and sometimes comes even to a stop. We need to reboot then. In computer science speak this effect is called “thrashing”. Our computers use hard-drives as extended memories. If they cannot hold enough data in their memories they push them out to disk. If you have enough applications running in parallel the system performance is reduced because files have to be swapped from the computer memory to the hard-disk back and forth. You can bring any computer system to its knees by increasing the number of parallel processes.

A similar thing happens with the human brain. Let’s say we write a document (task 1) and get interrupted by a phone call (task 2). 

1. Writing a document requires focus. Blood rushes to the anterior prefrontal cortex – the switchboard of our brain. It basically activates the brain region required to perform the task at hand.
2. Then there is the identification of the neurons within this region capable of completing the task as well as the triggering of the actual task processing itself. This process is called “rule activation” and takes several tenths of a second to accomplish. We begin to write.
3. While we are typing, our sensory system picks up the ring tone of our cell phone. Speaking and engaging in conversation are handled by a different brain region. Via the anterior prefrontal cortex the process of disengaging from our writing task is managed. We store enough information to resume this task later. Then, the new task 2 is started (see steps 1 and 2).
4. We start another rule activation for task 2. We have real measurable switching costs.

These are the steps that occur between two tasks. Imagine to what extent we are taxed with switching costs in a work environment, where we process daily hundreds of emails, tens of calls and deal with multiple project assignments. Anything that can be done to bring focus in the work day, anything that can be done to bring hours of uninterrupted work time will enhance productivity.

I have found in my work with corporate clients that people who are regularly interrupted take up to fifty percent (50%) longer to finish their tasks. Also, the amount of errors goes up about that much. There are very effective excercises to demonstrate this effect. Keep that in mind when you organize your day.