The Multitasking Myth

I read a great quote from Clifford Nass, a psychology professor at Standford University. Here’s what he says regarding multitasking:

People who multitask all the time can’t filter out irrelevancy. They can’t manage a working memory. They’re chronically distracted.

They initiate much larger parts of their brain that are irrelevant to the task at hand. And even - they’re even terrible at multitasking. When we ask them to multitask, they’re actually worse at it. So they’re pretty much mental wrecks.¹

It’s a change in tune that I used to hear. In the 2000s, everyone needed to be a multitasker, and you would list this attribute on your résumé. People expected you to behave in such a way. But I think people meant to say is: rank your work. Choose to the task that is the most urgent, and stop doing whatever task you thought was important. Rank and reassess is what you should be doing throughout the day.

I agree with ranking and reassessing urgent matters; however, at times, we need to stop multitasking and focus on a bigger goal, or focus on urgent tasks that needs our attention. This is what Cal Newport is opining in his book Deep Work from which I found this quote.

“people who can’t filter out irrelevancy.”

Is the word irrelevancy another word for ranking tasks? Irrelevancy is the inverse of priority or high ranking. If you are perform the relevant work, you are on track. If you cannot filter out the irrelevancy you are not ranking tasks appropriately, which is a problem.

How can we get better at filtering out irrelevancy?

I guess one would need to start focusing and stepping back and evaluating what is relevant. Do the items needed; not all the hundreds of smaller sub-items that may be easy to do or ignoring the relevant task that you know you need to do, but are doing other tasks to avoid it.

Cover Image Credit²