everyone is glitching

In 2011, I gave a TEDx talk and spent a third of it sharing my enthusiasm for multitasking. “We’re expert multitaskers,” I argued. Doing 37 things at once isn’t a choice busy people get to make which is why we’re so good at it. “I multitask, therefore I am,“ I proclaimed. The 28,000 views on YouTube seemed to confirm that I was right.

But I was wrong. So very wrong to defend the art of multitasking.

It’s been many years and many scientific studies since then. While we’ve always known that slowness nurtures attention, we’re now overwhelmed by information. We can’t think clearly. Not hour by hour, not minute by minute. At what cost?

ICYMI: your brain can only handle one or two thoughts at once. That’s it. If you try to handle more than that, you’ll experience pretty steep “switching costs” when you switch from one task to another. In his brilliant book, Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention–and How to Think Deeply Again, Johann Hari talks about the price we pay for moments like the one when you’re focused on writing an email: as you’re writing, a text comes in and you glance at your phone, then look back at your inbox and carry on. That momentary switch you make with your eyeballs? It causes your performance to drop. The time it takes for you to refocus on that email takes far longer than you realize.

You’re also more error-prone. Your brain glitches. Because your brain has no time or space to stand still and make new connections, your creativity goes down the drain. Constantly switching tasks also prevents you from remembering what you just saw.

• Did you know that the average American worker is distracted once every three minutes?

• Were you aware that the average Fortune 500 CEO gets only 28 minutes of time to herself during an entire work day?

• If your phone is near you while you’re working, even if you’re not holding it or staring at it, did you know you’re likely to perform 20% less well than you otherwise would have?

• One in five car accidents is now due to distracted driving which includes merely getting texts while you’re on the road. Did you know this stuff was deadly?

If I told you that by switching tasks you’d take a lot longer to get through your work day, you’d make more mistakes, you’d be less creative, and you’d remember less, would you stop switching tasks so frequently?

It’s really, really hard to stop.

You can silence your phone, mute notification sounds, time block productive work hours, close social media apps, ex out of all those browser tabs, use Freedom to block distractions, unsubscribe from retail sales updates, schedule less things to do, and actually look your kids in the eye when they’re talking to you.

But before you can do any of that, you’ll have to answer this: what’s your attachment to today’s distractions and what can you do to bring your focus back?

See you soon,

jill

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