Cure for Multitasking Drift

[Trip Krant]

Worth the read:

Tuesday, 12 July 2011

JOURNAL: Is Scanning and Situational Awareness a cure for Multitask...

If you are like me, you interact with a flood of information, online networks, and people everyday.  To handle it all, we multitask.  Unfortunately, it's easy to get off track or drift off course while multi-tasking.  

This occurs because the act of multi-tasking -- responding to an e-mail/tweet/phone call, adding a new post/picture, etc. -- becomes an end in itself, rather than a means to an end.  That's understandable, since when we successfully complete interactions on twitter or SMS, studies have shown we get a hit of brain chemicals that stimulate us.  We feel smarter and more successful, even when we aren't.  

This trap, is something professional pilots have found a way to fight.

 

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How do you build a scan for online multitasking?  Build a checklist.

1. List the online tasks you want/need to keep up with.   
2. Organize the list from the most important task to the least.  Repeat important tasks in the list if the intervening tasks take you away too long from that important task.
3. After you go through enough scans to clear the deck, take a break to work on items that require long term thinking.

 

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The way to fight this is situational awareness. The little part of your brain that is ALWAYS asking you the questions:

• Where am I and what am I doing?
• Am I progressing towards my goal?
• Am I in any danger or is there a way to get to the goal faster?

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You can simulate that with:

1. Asking a friend to lambast you every 10-30 minutes with these questions until you nail it every time.  
2. Setting a random alarm that forces you to lift yourself out of your multi-tasking stupor to ask yourself these questions.
3. Or, and this is the most difficult way, do your entire scan with intentional, conscious thought.  Justifying each and every step until it becomes second nature.