Why you should mono-task, not multi-task

Dr Kristy Goodwin is a digital wellbeing and productivity expert who works with senior business leaders and HR executives to promote digital wellbeing and performance in their organisations. Her clients include Apple, Qantas, Macquarie Bank, Westpac, Deutsche Bank, the Reserve Bank of Australia and Foxtel.

In her new book, Dear Digital, We Need to talk: A guilt-free guide to taming your tech habits and thriving in a distracted world, Dr Goodwin shares realistic, research-backed strategies to cultivate healthy and helpful digital habits that work with, rather than against, your brain and body.

The following extract examines the benefits of mono-tasking, rather than multi-tasking, and outlines three micro-habits that can help.

Why you should mono-task, not multi-task

Numerous studies confirm that we cannot do two activities at the same time with sufficient focus; we can’t multi-task. Instead, the human brain ‘task-switches’ constantly between the two different demands vying for its attention — and it doesn’t switch all that well. This is referred to as the ‘task-switching cost’. 

Multi-tasking, or task switching, produces cortisol (the stress hormone) and adrenaline, which can inhibit learning and memory. Multi-tasking results in fatigue, because it depletes glucose levels in the brain. Stressed and exhausted brains don’t allow neural pathways to form, because the brain thinks it’s under threat and prioritises survival. Today, the pings, alerts and notifications from our devices are constantly vying for our attention and are elevating our stress response. 

Multi-tasking also adversely impacts our memory. When we multi-task, we don’t recruit the hippocampus, the memory centre of the brain; instead, we use the striatum, which is the brain system that underpins the acquisition of new skills, especially motor skills.

Much like our computer hard drives, our brains have a finite storage capacity. This is our ‘cognitive load’, and multi-tasking basically causes it to reach its threshold very quickly.

Rather than constantly switching tasks and splitting our attention, we can conserve our brain’s resources by mono-tasking instead, using the three micro-habits in this practice to help.

Micro-habit 1: Plan your workday

We need to structure our workdays so that we build a fortress around our mental prime time: our peak-performance window of the day. We need to plan our days in advance by time-blocking our calendars and doing our deep, focused work during our peak performance window.

When you intentionally plan your day, you won’t be in and out of your inboxes or constantly checking your Slack messages: you’ll have designated times of the day for shallow tasks such as asynchronous communication. 

If you timebox your days hour by hour, you’re much more likely to mono-task. If you revert to an open, unscheduled calendar, you’re much more likely to revert to multi-tasking, because your brain craves the quick dopamine hit that comes from checking an email or scrolling social media.

Micro-habit 2: Snack (don’t nibble) on your inbox

Having worked with thousands of leaders, executives and employees over the years, I’ve found that email is still many people’s Achilles heel. Email can dominate our work time, derail our productivity and diminish our mental wellbeing if we’re not careful. A client of mine recently revealed that she realised her email habits had slipped into unhealthy territory when she found herself reading a colleague’s email on the toilet (#toilettweeting).

Nibbling on emails throughout the day can dent our productivity. Unless your primary role requires immediate customer care or you’re relying on time-critical information, there’s no need to constantly check and respond to emails. Email is not a synchronous communication tool, and it was never designed to be our primary tool of communication. It’s an asynchronous tool that should be supplemented with other communication tools: for example, if someone needs an urgent response from you, then calling you or sending a WhatsApp or Slack message may be a better choice. 

Micro-habit 3: Wear noise-cancelling headphones

You know the drill: you start your Zoom meeting and, without fail, your next-door neighbour starts their leaf blower, your dog starts to bark, or your kids start to argue in the background. Research has confirmed that hearing intelligible speech can reduce our cognitive performance. It has also been shown to increase our stress. Why? Because this is a form of multi-tasking, and remember, our brains release cortisol when we’re multi-tasking.

So, what happens in an open-plan office (or open-plan home)? Studies have confirmed what many office-bound workers know: open-plan offices can be stressful places to work and detrimental to our mood if they’re not acoustically treated or well-designed. When hearing background sounds, even if we’re not paying attention to the sounds, our brains perceive this as a threat, resulting in us feeling stressed.

Wearing noise-cancelling headphones will block out some of the superfluous background noise that distracts you and drains your cognitive resources. They can also send a powerful visual cue to your colleagues (or partners, or kids) that you don’t want to be disturbed. They’re as effective as putting a Post-it note on your forehead that says ‘Do Not Disturb’.