Tripping Over Your Own Feet

At the office everyone jokes about multi-tasking, in the sort of unfunny way one jokes about pain to be endured. But multi-tasking is a myth. There's been research showing it doesn't work but you don't need to look at a study to know that. Just watch someone try to walk and push buttons on their cell phone at the same time. Not only do they get in other people's way, walk into things and generally act like they're lost; it's also obvious they're having a hard time operating their cell phone. Multi-tasking means doing every job worse than if you did each one singly.

But there's something deeper going on here too. The most interesting thing about distraction is how nobody's really aware of their own. Human attention is positive; it only notices what it's looking at. When you don't have enough attention for your current tasks, you certainly don't have enough attention to observe your own functioning. So although it's very easy to see that the guy walking and pushing buttons is distracted, he's completely unaware of it. If he realizes he's having trouble, he just thinks that what he's doing is hard or confusing. And because of this he never thinks to sit down before clicking away on his cell. The first thing distraction removes is your consciousness of being distracted.

But it gets worse. When you're having trouble doing something, the natural instinct is to give it more attention. But when your difficulties are caused by divided attention, paying more attention just means you have less attention to give to your own functioning or upcoming obstacles. Distraction feeds on itself and also shuts off the one thing that can bring you out of distraction: self-awareness. When you do a lousy job on a few things you have to work harder to get them done and catch up on everything else too. Pretty soon you're working so hard you can't do anything right. At this point most people think they're burnt out and need a vacation. What they're really doing is breaking away from all the mental noise in the office that's keeping them distracted.

See, removing distractions doesn't just mean only doing one thing at a time. It also means giving yourself enough time to finish something before you start what's next. That time includes the seemingly useless time needed to decompress. A manager that spends all day in meetings without a break is just as distracted as a programmer working on three projects at once. His full attention isn't on any one thing, so nothing gets done particularly well. But like with any distraction, although it's obvious to all his employees, the boss is unaware of his underfunctioning.

One of the important cures for distraction is to become self-aware enough to recognize it in yourself. Look for the symptoms. Confusion, impatience, or a feeling of pressure or buzzing in your head are all typical. Symptoms can also be unique to yourself, and only you will be able to diagnose them. So you need to pay enough attention to your own functioning to notice when it drops. When you do notice it, you will know it's time to go take a walk, delegate some problem, or take a day off. Reducing your mental load, instead of working harder, is what keeps you sure-footed and in the right direction.