116. The Myth of Multi Tasking

Leonardo da Vinci says time stays long enough for anyone who will use it. 

So many of the women I work with experience time anxiety. They are relating to thoughts about time in a really unhelpful way. They're using thoughts about what's happening in the past or the future to derail what's happening in the present. And they are taking the worst kind of action to deal with time anxiety...multi-tasking. I want to teach you how to relate to time differently, and get a handle on how you can use time, rather than be a victim of time scarcity. 

Transcript

 To live is so startling. It leaves little time for anything else. This quote from Emily Dickinson starts us off. Today's episode is all about time. Welcome into the Modern Creative Woman podcast. I'm Amy and I am excited to talk to you today about time. So many of the women I work with and the people I know experience time anxiety. They are relating to thoughts about time in a really unhelpful way. They're using thoughts about what's happening in the past or the future to derail what's happening in the present. I want to teach you how to relate to time differently, and really get a handle on how you can use time, rather than be a victim of time. Let's get into this. Let's get this started. 

Leonardo da Vinci says time stays long enough for anyone who will use it. He's making a really powerful point about our choice to access time. Ask yourself, what is your relationship with time? Are you a person who experiences time anxiety? I started thinking about what are some of the things that we tell ourselves about time. And how are these thoughts helping or not helping us? You might have had this thought, I don't have enough time. You may have said to yourself and others, I'm too busy. Perhaps you've said this is taking too long. I can't wait. Maybe someone's told you I need this immediately. Trying to generate urgency. If you're a mom, you've certainly said hurry up. Maybe you have thoughts in your head that it's too late. Let's step back from our thoughts for a moment and really get into the definition of time. Now, kind of the most obvious way to define it through Merriam-Webster is a point of time is measured in hours and minutes, days and years. But there's a slightly more nuanced way to understand time. It is the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present and future that are regarded as a whole. It's a real shift to go from I have 60 minutes in an hour to correct the understanding, the use of time as this indefinite progress. It's about existence, and it's comparing past, present, future and looking at it as a continuum. You can also describe time as this continuous, measurable period during which stuff happens. In physics, time is considered the fourth dimension. The other three are of course length and width and height, and we use time to sequence events to compare and estimate. So once we can wrap our head around the quantum experience of time. I want to talk about the main problem that I see women struggling with. Around time, it's multitasking. Are you a fan of multitasking? You may be familiar with the ancient philosopher Sirius. To do two things at once is to do neither. Let me repeat that. To do two things at once is to do neither. So we've known for eons that we can't do two things at once. And science has backed this up. I think the term multitasking came into popularity as the dysfunction of capitalism increased, as people needed to make more money, work more hours, and do more stuff to simply get by. We created a myth of multitasking. But the research, according to a lot of what's published through the American Psychological Association, is showing you that it's simply impossible. Two tasks at a time, especially one that might be more complex, takes a huge toll on your productivity. You want to get stuff done. You're not multitasking. So psychologists studied what happens to cognition or mental processes when people are trying to perform more than one task at a time? And what they found is that our mind and our brain is simply not designed for this kind of heavy duty multitasking. Now, you might be able to, you know, throw in a load of laundry while talking to a friend. There's kind of this low, low level precision involved in this. But you're not doing two things at once at all. You talk to your friends, so you have to speak. Then you stop speaking. You start paying attention to laundry. You move the laundry into the washing machine. Then you stop doing that. Then your brain turns towards listening and you listen to what your friend says. Then you stop listening and you set the dials on the washing machine, and then you stop doing the washing and you shift back to respond to your friend. And on and on it goes. It requires stopping and starting. And it's called the set shifting. So in psychological research when we set shift, it means we're changing mental tasks. And it is hard to do. It requires a lot of focus, a lot of attention. And it's very demanding on our brain. The cost of trying to multitask is, you know, basically you're not doing anything. Things take way longer than if you just did one thing at a time. But we experience mental overload. And when our brain is overloaded in this way, it leads to an immediate loss of time. There's a high loss of efficiency, like we're taking too long. We're not doing things in a logical manner, and we're more prone to errors. We're more likely to put in the bleach when we shouldn't in the washing machine. We're more likely to say the wrong word to our friend or be insensitive about something. If we're trying to do all these things at once. A good metaphor for this is the job of thinking in your brain becomes like an air traffic controller. Instead of trying to help land one plane, it suddenly tasked with trying to do that for multiple planes, whatever you're working on. I've talked before about what happens when we're scrolling on our phone, but imagine what happens in your brain when you're set, shifting between a work task and the the dopamine hit of your phone. You look at your phone, you scroll. So you're set, shifting to different posts. Then you have to stop looking at your phone and shift back and back and forth we go. And the result is this mental overload, decision fatigue. And we become much more prone to errors. So if there's one thing you take from today's episode, is to stop calling it multitasking and call it the myth of multitasking. If you want to be more efficient, put down your phone and do one task at a time. There's wonderful, satisfying research in support of this as well, and it relates to feeling good and feeling happy. And we are overall happier doing one thing and being present. That is, doing the task and thinking about what we're doing will be happier doing that than if we're doing the task and thinking about something else. And this holds true for even dull tasks. So maybe you're driving and there's a lot of traffic if you just drive and you are attending to traffic, it's way less stressful than if you're driving and daydreaming or wishing you were at home already. This works for doing the dishes. You're going to have a better time doing the dishes, thinking about the dishes than you would be if you were thinking about something else you wanted to be doing. This really relates to making contact with the present moment and being in a mindful space. Now, there's a few ways you can kind of play with this idea when you think about time. Notice what it brings up for you. Notice what your thoughts are. Did you have any of those uncomfortable thoughts like, oh no, I have to hurry, I'm late. I'm out of time. There's not enough time. I'm too busy. Those thoughts are stressful. So every time you say those or think those, ask yourself, how does that thought make me feel? Set your phone down. Pull out your watch if you have one. Have a look at a clock and see what it feels like to sit still and focus on it for two minutes. You can observe whatever comes through your mind, but more importantly, just observe that time is passing and you're observing it. The experience of two minutes of quiet is really good for us. It's a soft reset on our brain. It's important. Good work. The next thing is to set a timer for two minutes and close your eyes and allow yourself to focus on. Here I am. Time is happening. The event happening in this moment is me sitting quietly with my eyes closed. These two exercises, two minutes of watching the time pass and two minutes of just experiencing time. Without any urgency, the timer is set. It will let you know when time is up. We'll help you start to shift how you relate to time. Time is deeply relevant to your own art making, and the work of behind. My technique is all about flow and the funny experience that happens where we relate differently to time, when we are experiencing flow, in those moments where we are enjoying ourselves, the task is engaging. There's a small degree of difficulty, but not too much. We feel focused on the task and our relationship to time changes. That experience of flow naturally alters our perception of time. It doesn't mean that time has changed, that our perception has changed. And you've experienced this before. When you say time flies when you're having fun. If you're on vacation, it feels like it went fast. If you are out with friends and having a wonderful time, suddenly the night is over and you're like, how did time fly? Time was expanding or contracting according to our perception of it. So the next time you're focused on these negative, uncomfortable thoughts of there is no time, it's too late. I don't have enough time. Just remember that that's a way to relate to time. It's only one of the possible ways to relate to time and to alter your perception of time. Is completely possible. It's done through creativity, through focus, through eliminating multitasking from your life. Your sense of being able to fill your days in ways that are meaningful to you will increase. It's very much a value based action to relate to time in a way that serves you. I want to remind you about Leonardo da Vinci's quote, and see if it makes kind of a different kind of sense at the end of this episode. Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it. So how will you use your time to allow it to stay long enough for you? I would love to know your thoughts on this episode, and how you might shift your perspective on time to reduce time anxiety. Let me know! You can message me in the show notes, and you can always find me over on Instagram at Doctor Amy Bakos. Have a wonderful rest of your week. Now that you know about how to use your creativity, what will you create? 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