A person basically works in a regime. What if I can't stop multitasking?

Forget about invisibility or the ability to fly. The only superpower we dream of today is doing several different things at the same time. However, unlike any other superpower, the ability to multitask is often found as a basic requirement for employment.

Some of you can probably remember sitting in front of multi-touch computers or tablets, posting statuses on Twitter, and at the same time devouring steak and cold orange juice. Others read on Kindle, pointing at their smartphone and looking at the TV in the corner with two lines of rolling subtitles. We don’t think twice about sending a colleague an email asking for coffee, because we’re sure he’ll read the email within a few minutes.

Simply put, this is how the modern world works. is an ability like reading or adding numbers, so fundamental that it is taken for granted. Doing one thing at a time is for losers. Let us remember how Lyndon Johnson spoke of Gerald Ford: “Ford is good guy, but he can’t chew gum and walk at the same time.”

The rise of multitasking is driven by technological developments, as well as social change. Husbands and wives are no longer divided into breadwinners and housewives - now everyone must be both. Work and hobbies can be inseparable from each other. Your friends can contact you even if you are at work by sending you an email at 10 am. And your boss might call you on your cell phone at 10 p.m. You can shop while sitting at your desk and stay in control of work issues while standing in line at the supermarket.

This is a good change in many ways. How wonderful it is to be able to do important things and not waste time. How delightful is the diversity in all its manifestations! You no longer have to live in a monotonous Taylorist world where you had to completely focus on the same type of tasks until you went crazy.

Yet we are beginning to understand that the benefits of a multitasking life are not so clear-cut. We feel overwhelmed with things that may need to be done at any moment. We feel like we could be called at any time.

We are worried about the terrible appetite of our children who do everything at once: scrolling through homework, texting on WhatsApp, listening to music and watching Game of Thrones.

According to a recent study by Sabrina Pabilonia of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, students spend more than half of their homework time listening to music or watching TV—in other words, multitasking. And this trend is only gaining momentum. Maybe they really manage to process all the incoming information? They think this way, even though research suggests otherwise.

Now we can see a backlash against multitasking - a kind of self-help campaign. A living example is a crowdfunding project on Kickstarter in December 2014. For $499—more than a feature-rich laptop—you could buy the Hemingwrite, a computer with a good keyboard, a small E-Ink screen, and automatic sending of typed text to cloud storage. You can't send email with Hemingwrite. With Hemingwrite you can't watch YouTube, you can't read the news. You can only print. The Hemingwrite campaign raised more than $3 million.

The example of Hemingwrite (after rebranding the company is called Freewrite) demonstrates that you can cope with multitasking through self-restraint

Programs like Freedom or Self-Control are appearing, you can install them in your browser to disable it for a certain time. The Villa Stéphanie, a hotel in Baden-Baden, offers an additional service in its suites: a small silver switch next to the bed with which you can activate a wireless network blocker, so as not to be tempted by the Internet.

The line between opponents has been drawn. On the one side, modern culture a workplace that requires you to be ready to be interrupted at any time. On the other are the proponents of single-tasking, who insist that multitasking is a fallacy and that what matters most is what matters most. Which one is right?

The price of behavior

There is enough evidence to support the fact that we should focus on one thing at a time. Let's look at a study by David Strayer, a psychologist at the University of Utah. In 2006, Strayer and his colleagues used a high-fidelity driving simulator to compare the performance of drivers who text while driving with those of drivers with a high blood alcohol level (BAC). Talkative drivers' driving styles were not aggressive or risky like those of drunk drivers, but they were dangerous in other ways. Drivers with phones were much slower to react to events outside the car and did not notice signs around them. Strayer's disappointing conclusion was that driving while using a cell phone is just as dangerous as driving while intoxicated.

There was another important finding in this study: it does not matter whether the driver is talking while holding the phone in his hand or on the phone. speakerphone. Problems caused by talking while driving are not due to a lack of hands. And because of the lack of mental resources.

However, this discovery did not make much of an impression on public opinion or legislators. In the UK, for example, it is illegal to use a telephone with your hands while driving, but talking on a hands-free phone is completely legal. We are happy to admit that we have only two hands, but we refuse to admit that we have only one brain.

In another study, Strayer showed that we also misjudge our own multitasking abilities. Study participants who claimed to be able to multitask for long periods of time performed poorly on tests of multitasking ability. They systematically overestimated their capabilities and were less able to control their emotions. In other words, wanting to multitask is a clear sign that you probably shouldn't be doing it.

We may not immediately realize that multitasking is hindering us. The first time I used Twitter was to comment on a public event during a televised government debate in 2010. I liked the feeling of live communication: I could view candidates’ arguments and post responses, write my own 140-character thoughtful sayings and watch them being shared. I felt completely involved in what was happening. It was only at the end of the debate that I realized, to my great surprise, that I could not remember absolutely anything that Brown, Cameron and Clegg had said.

Research conducted in University of California, confirms that my experience is not unique. Three psychologists, Karin Foerde, Barbara Knowlton, and Russell Poldrack, showed students a series of cards with symbols on them, and then asked them to make a prediction if they understood the pattern. Some of these predictions were made in a multitasking environment, where students also had to listen to a recording of low and high tones and calculate the highest one. You might think that making a forecast and at the same time trying to focus on sounds is too much huge pressure. Not really. Students were sufficiently trained to recognize patterns with or without audio cues.

But here’s the catch: when the researchers, after completing the task, asked more general issues about patterns, the full cost of multitasking behavior became clear. Students struggled to answer questions about the predictions they made in a multitasking environment. They completed both tasks successfully, but did not learn anything that they could apply in another context.

This is a disappointing discovery. When we send email on time, we don't do it carefully. According to the findings of psychologists, the feeling of understanding can be an illusion, and only then you discover that in fact you did not remember a lot or cannot flexibly apply your knowledge. This means that multitasking makes us more forgetful - another trait that makes us a bit like drunks.

The first "multitaskers"

In 1958, young psychologist Bernice Eiduson began a long-term research project. As it turned out, it was so long-term that she did not live to see its completion. Eiduson studied the work practices of forty scientists, mostly men. She periodically, every few years, interviewed them and conducted psychological tests. Some scientists' careers ended in failure, while others achieved serious success. Four received the Nobel Prize, and two more were considered serious contenders for it. Several people were invited to join National Academy Sci.

After Eiduson's death, her colleagues published an analysis of Bernice's work. In particular, Robert Root-Bernstein, Maurine Bernstein and Helen Garnier wanted to determine what determines a long, productive career as a scientist, to find the recipe for genius and longevity.

There was no secret in the interviews and psychological tests. But looking at the early publications of these scientists, their first 100 scientific articles, the researchers discovered one pattern: leading scientists constantly changed the direction of their activities.

In the first 100 papers, the most productive scientists managed to cover five different research areas and changed from one topic to another about 43 times. They published, changed the topic, published again and changed the topic again. Since the research takes a long time, sometimes their topics overlapped. So what is the secret to a long and highly productive career as a scientist? In multitasking.

Charles Darwin successfully coped with various activities. He began writing his notes on the mutation of species two decades before the publication of On the Origin of Species. " Biographical sketch one child,” he began writing immediately after the birth of his son William, and published it only when William was 37 years old. At the same time, Darwin worked on climbing and insectivorous plants for almost 20 years. He published a book about earthworms in 1881, shortly before his death. Darwin worked on it for 44 years. When psychologists Howard Gruber and Sara Davis studied the methods of Darwin and other famous scientists, they concluded that such overlapping studies were common.

Another group of psychologists, led by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, interviewed nearly 100 exceptionally creative people, from jazz pianist Oscar Peterson and writer Stephen Jay Gould to twice Nobel laureate, physicist John Bardeen. Csikszentmihalyi is known for developing the blissful state of being so absorbed in one's goal that one does not notice the passage of time and leaves all distractions outside. Moreover, each of Csikszentmihalyi’s respondents practiced working on several projects at the same time.

Just internet addiction?

If the term "multitasking" can be applied to both Darwin and a teenager with a habit of constantly checking Instagram, it's worth considering more precise definition this phenomenon. There are at least four types of activities that we can refer to when we talk about multitasking.

1. Innate multitasking

For example, when you can sing and play the piano at the same time. Innate multitasking is possible, but at least one of the tasks must be performed automatically, without additional thought.

2. Switch between tasks

Now let's talk about the situation when you are making a presentation for your boss, at the same time answering his calls and keeping one eye on him in case he wants to bother you there. It can't be called multitasking in the same sense. The term “quick task switching” is more appropriate here because your attention is split between the presentation, the phone, and your inbox. Much of what we call multitasking is actually rapidly switching between tasks.

3. Distracted attention

Switching between tasks is often confused with a third activity - the secret hobby of scrolling through an endless feed of gossip about the stars and updates on social networks in between. Eat a big difference between the person who stopped in the middle of an article to make a few notes on a future project and then came back to it, and the person who read half the article and then went to look at photos of girls in bikinis. “What we call multitasking is often trivial,” says psychologist Shelley Carson, author of Your Creative Brain. “This is a compulsive action, not a manifestation of multitasking.”

4. Managing multiple projects

And the last type of multitasking is when you don’t need to achieve a goal, but simply do a lot of things. The car needs to be taken to a service center. My teeth hurt. The husband cannot pick up the children from school today. I need to prepare for an important meeting next week, and also pay taxes. Just because there are a lot of things to do doesn't mean you need to do them all at once. It's just life.

Fight for attention

For all four actions: innate multitasking, switching between tasks, absentmindedness and managing multiple projects - one label is “multitasking”. This is not due to ordinary linguistic confusion; they are similar in another respect. In particular, the highly productive practice of managing several disparate projects at the same time can lead to a completely unproductive habit of quickly switching between tasks.

To understand why this happens, consider a story that happened in a restaurant near the University of Berlin in the 1920s - psychologists like to tell it. When large group academicians came to the restaurant, the waiter came up to take the order, and calmly nodded each time when they added a new dish or drink to the overall complex order. He didn't write anything down, but when he returned with the food, everyone was convinced that his memory was impeccable. When leaving, the academicians were still discussing his extraordinary skill. But one of them returned for some forgotten item, and the waiter did not remember him. How did it happen that the waiter suddenly became so absent-minded? “Very simple,” he replied. “When the order is paid, I forget it.”

One of the members of the Berlin School was the young experimental psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik. In one experiment, she demonstrated that people remember unfinished tasks better. This phenomenon is called "": when we interrupt an action without completing it, we cannot get it out of our heads. Our subconscious mind keeps a reminder that a task requires attention.

The Zeigarnik effect may explain the connection between having multiple responsibilities and overusing rapid task switching. We run from task to task because we can't forget about all the things we haven't done yet. We run from task to task because we are trying to drown out our obsession. inner voice.

Now we talked a lot about protecting attention and single-tasking. But in the past, a lot was said in defense of calligraphic handwriting or insisted that everyone needs a butler. The world is moving forward. There's something appealing about Hemingwrite and a room without internet in a hotel, but there's also something impractical.

It's not true that Facebook is the only thing stopping you from achieving literary fame. And in most offices, Hemingwrite is not the best tool for getting promoted. You're not Ernest Hemingway and you can't just ignore inboxes from your colleagues.

Single-tasking can only survive if it makes compromises with today's multitasking world.

Loops and lists

The word "multitasking" wasn't used to describe people until the 1990s; for half a century it was used exclusively to describe computers. According to Oxford English dictionary, the term "multitasking" first appeared in print in Datamation magazine in 1966 to describe a computer capable of performing several different tasks simultaneously.

Just like people, computers usually create the illusion of multitasking, but in reality they simply switch between tasks very quickly. Only computers switch faster; they don’t need 20 minutes to get back on track after a break.

In addition, the computer will not worry about what is not done. As long as the queue passes and the text is sent to the printer, he will not feel any guilt for the fact that the mouse froze for the last 16 milliseconds. Time will come to the mouse. Being a computer means never experiencing the Zeigarnik effect.

How can we maintain the feeling that everything is under control if we feel a constant feeling of guilt for what we didn’t do?

Every time you tell someone, “I'll get back to this,” you start a cycle in your brain. And this cycle will continue to spin there until you put a substitute into the system that you can trust.

David Allen

Modern life encourages us to discover more and more new cycles. We don't necessarily have a lot of work to do, but we do have a lot of work to do that we need to be ready to do at a moment's notice. Tasks flow inexorably into one another. No matter what we do, we can't help but feel like we should be doing something else. And this requires significant mental effort.

The principle outlined in is simple: close open loops. The details are more complicated, but the principle itself is comprehensive. After every thing you do for yourself or someone else, write down what you plan to do next. Reviewing your next actions list frequently will help ensure you're not overlooking anything.

Allen's method has many followers. Experience shows that many people find it extremely useful, including myself (details below). Yet it was only recently that psychologists EJ Masicampo and Roy Baumeister found an explanation for why people feel better using David Allen's system. In fact, it is not at all necessary to complete the task to get rid of the Zeigarnik effect. A specific plan will help with this. Write down the next action and you will notice that the annoying inner voice fades away. You transfer your worries onto a piece of paper.

Boundaries of creativity

It's probably a wise decision to leave fast task switching to computers. But even frantically rushing between Facebook, email and documents can provide certain benefits.

Psychologist Shelley Carson and her student Justin Moore recently conducted an experiment. They tested students' ability to quickly switch between tasks. Each subject was given two tasks: solving anagrams and reading articles from scientific journals. The assignments had to be completed on a computer. Half of the subjects completed the tasks sequentially: first they solved anagrams, and then read the article. For the other half of the experimental group, the tasks on the screen changed every two and a half minutes - from anagrams to an article and back, and so on several times.

It is not surprising that due to the constant switching of tasks, the subjects in the second group thought more slowly. They solved fewer anagrams and were less aware of the content of what they read because they switched attention from one to another every 150 seconds.

But when interpreting the results, the advantages of such multitasking were revealed. Subjects who performed the switching task were more More specifically, their test scores were characterized by lateral thinking, especially in open-ended questions. They might, for example, be asked to come up with as many uses for a rolling pin as possible, or to list the consequences of what would happen to the world if people had three hands instead of two. Forced “multitaskers” gave more varied answers, and their thoughts were more original.

“Task switching seems to trigger creativity in people,” says Carson, an associate professor at Harvard. The results of her collaboration with Moore have not yet been published, but one could already argue that such tasks are unlikely to be suitable for measuring creativity. Carson responds that laboratory studies have found a relationship between divergent thinking and creative activity V in a broad sense, whether it's writing a novel, producing a professional stage show, or creating a beautiful canvas. Those who are convinced that great work can only be done through superhuman concentration should reflect on this discovery.

Carson and her colleagues found a correlation between significant achievements in the creative field and the manifestation of such a psychological phenomenon as low ability of latent inhibition. Latent inhibition is a filter that all mammals have that allows them to unconsciously tune out unimportant stimuli. It would be unbearable to hear every conversation in the office, the hum of the air conditioner, while at the same time noticing every person who passes by the office window. Hidden inhibition saves us from this. This subconscious filter allows us to walk through the world without reacting to all external stimuli.

Yet people whose filters are a little more permeable are more likely to be creative. Think about it, single-taskers: While you're trying too hard to focus on one thing, people who can't resist the noise of the world are now taking their manuscripts to the publishing house.

“You're bringing more information into your cognitive space, and it can be either conscious or unconscious,” says Carson. Two other psychologists, Holly White and Priti Shah, have found a similar pattern in the behavior of people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

It would be wrong to romanticize serious illnesses, such as ADHD. All studies were conducted among university students, that is, people who have already demonstrated their ability to perceive information. Although the conditions of White and Shah's experiment were non-trivial: its participants had to have a clinical diagnosis of ADHD. This means that the attention deficit bothered the students so much that they were forced to seek professional help.

It's an amazing discovery: switching between tasks makes us more creative. It's even more amazing to realize that in a time when we all live under the threat of constant distraction, people who are prone to distraction can thrive creatively.

Maybe we shouldn't be so surprised. "By switching between tasks, you can grease the rails on which thought runs," says John Kounios, a professor of psychology at Drexel University.

Kounios, co-author of the book Eureka Factor, suggests there are at least two psychological mechanisms, which can potentially trigger creativity when switching between tasks. One is that a new challenge helps us forget bad ideas. When solving a creative problem, it's easier to get stuck because we think about it, but at the same time we just can't stop thinking about it. When you do something new, fundamentally different, the forgetting reaction is activated, which allows us to free ourselves and find the right solution.

The second mechanism is flexible assimilation. When a new task prompts us to think about solving the old one. A famous example is Archimedes and his “Eureka!”

As the story goes, Archimedes' task was to determine whether the crown was truly made of pure gold (without impurities) without destroying it. jewel. The solution turned out to be this: to see whether the golden crown would displace the same volume of water from the vessel as a gold ingot of the same mass. This solution came to Archimedes's mind when he was taking a bath and thinking about changes in the water level. Taking a bath and looking for a solution to a problem isn't multitasking?

6 Ways to Become a Multitasking Genius

1. Be careful

“The ideal situation for multitasking is when you can concentrate in right moment", writes psychologist Shelley Carson. Tom Chatfield, author of Live This Book, recommends creating two lists: one for things that are better done online, and one for things that are better done offline. Connecting and disconnecting from the Internet should be a conscious action.

2. Write it down

The main idea of ​​Get Things Done by David Allen is to turn every vague thought and guilt into specific action. Therefore, write down all your tasks regularly and review them constantly. The goal is to not worry about the things you are doing and the things you decide not to do right now, but at the same time to be confident that nothing will go to waste.

3. Tame your smartphone

A smartphone is a great but annoying assistant. Turn off unnecessary alerts: Most people don't need to know about new tweets or incoming emails. Set up a storage system in your email. For example, when it is more convenient to respond to a message using the keyboard (you need to write 50 words or more), you move the message to a special folder in which it is stored until you get to your computer.

4. Focus on short tasks

The technique proposed by Francesco Chirillo is to break big task for several approaches of 25 minutes (they are called pomodoros), between which there is a short break. Productivity guru Merlin Mann recommends the email dash method of reviewing your email or to-do list for a few minutes every hour. These techniques help you focus while still allowing you to switch between projects several times a day.

5. Procrastinate to win.

If you are working on several interesting projects at the same time, you can put one aside and work on another. This is exactly how Charles Darwin worked. Change is just as good as rest, and as psychologist John Kounios explains, switching between tasks in this way helps spark new ideas.

6. Work in different areas

“Creative ideas come to people who work in different fields or have several different projects,” says author and psychologist Keith Sawyer. By the way, Sawyer is also a jazz pianist and a former management consultant and game designer at Atari. Good ideas often come when your mind makes unexpected connections between different areas.

Tim Harford's To Do List

Write everything down. I use Google Calendar for appointments and a digital to-do list called Remember The Milk, as well as a dedicated daily to-do list on paper. The details don't matter. The principle is not to keep everything in your head.

The list should be as complete as possible. On my list at this moment 151 points. (No, I didn’t memorize this number, I recalculated.)

Update the list. The system works and relieves anxiety if you trust that your calendar and task list will remind you of what you need to do. I spend 20 minutes a week going through my list, checking off deadlines, making sure I don't have any important items missing from my list. Revising the list is very important. The more you trust it, the more often you use it. The more you use it, the more you trust it.

A list with additional context is just as good as a topical list. Naturally, it's easier to keep a list about a specific topic or project, such as a to-do list for redecorating a guest room or a list of plans for the next year. Things to do before departure; things to buy in the store; ideas to talk about with your boss when you meet.

Be specific about the next action. If you're just jotting down vague reminders, your to-do list will continue to cause anxiety. Before you write down a poorly worded problem, think for 15 seconds about what exactly it is.

In relation to new technologies, the term “multitasking” (or “multitasking”, from the English multitasking) means the simultaneous use of several applications and easy switching between them.

True, some developers mobile applications Still, we were keen on the idea of ​​split screen. Multitasking mode, which displays two applications at once (one on top of the other), works on many Samsung gadgets. And in Windows 8 for tablets, application windows are placed side by side. But few owners of Samsung devices or Windows 8 tablets use this feature: it makes the already small screen smaller and people have to work in tiny windows.

Samsung Galaxy Note in multitasking mode: CNN (top) and Evernote (bottom) apps split the screen into two windows.

Windows 8 supports displaying two applications side by side ( Internet Explorer on the left and Maps on the right).

Despite the current trend towards larger screens mobile phones, the most convenient and ergonomic gadgets are small ones. But the smaller the screen, the less space there is to display content. Therefore, smartphone users interact more frequently with the interface (for example, scroll more often) to view the same amount of content as on a computer monitor.

They have to recall more information to understand what they read because they cannot refer to previously viewed text as easily. People perceive what they read on a mobile screen twice as poorly as on a desktop computer monitor. The smaller the usable screen space, the worse the experience.

If you can't display apps side by side, the only thing left to do is make it easier to switch between them. iOS uses double-clicking the home button to access the gallery or "carousel" of running applications. As long as there aren't too many programs open, users can switch between them fairly easily.

Double-clicking the home button on iOS opens a carousel of running apps.

Up until Lollipop (the latest version of Android OS), Android devices also had a "Recent Apps" button. Android development was even better than iOS because up to four different elements were displayed on the screen at the same time, making it easier to switch to the desired application.

In previous versions of Android OS, the list of “recent applications” was opened by pressing the button of the same name.

In Android 5.0 Lollipop, this list was replaced by a “deck” of cards, peeking out from behind each other and displayed using the fisheye-visualization technique: recently open elements are depicted in more detail than those launched a long time ago - thanks to which the screen can accommodate more applications at the same time.

The updated list of running applications in Lollipop has another innovation: you can now open multiple tabs within one application, just like in a browser. For example, if you're messaging two friends at the same time, you'll get quick access to each conversation individually—both tabs will appear as thumbnails in your recent apps list.

Android 5.0 Lollipop's design uses fisheye visualization, allowing you to display more items in the Recent Apps list and see multiple different tabs from a single app.

This approach to multitasking doesn't solve the problem of combining multiple sources of information on one screen, but it does solve the issue of saving work: if you perform two different tasks in an application, you don't have to dig into the interface and restore context to move from one task to another. Now each individual task is saved in a “frozen” form, and access to other tasks is opened with a couple of taps.

The updated design of the list of running applications on Android is definitely a plus, because it eliminates unnecessary steps and significantly reduces (at least partially) interaction costs. But you still have to look for the right tab in a rather large “stack of cards”. Moreover, the number of cards in the “deck” can increase significantly if each application is allowed to create many tabs. (This “card deck” is essentially a “carousel”, and carousels require sequential access instead of direct access.) And, remember that the card view doesn't really help users gather information that's scattered across multiple sources: people will still have to remember what they need.

Is multitasking really necessary on smartphones?

Advanced multitasking on phones is a chicken-and-egg problem: users don't ask for it because they don't do it on small screens. complex tasks, requiring multiple sources of information. But one could argue that they don't perform such tasks because modern smartphones don't support multitasking well.

To improve multitasking support on phones, developers are required to:

• Designers of mobile platforms (Apple, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, etc.) must invent new ways to quickly switch between applications and convert close attention to switch between the last two programs (the case with calendar and email as an example).
• Application and website developers (most of you) need to remember that people often need to work with two (or more) things at once, and over the last 15 years, the main function of the Internet has become to help the user compare and choose from alternatives. You need to make it easy to compare objects and switch between recently viewed items.

If these aspects are improved, people will surely start multitasking more often on mobile devices. One thing is clear: multitasking is necessary in the highest-value use cases, so advanced multitasking support will lead to a more complete use of your products, applications and landing pages.

Multitasking is the requirement of the present time. We must manage everything, do it efficiently, a lot and on time. Some people easily live in this mode, while others cannot organize their work effectively at all.

Of course, we attribute multitasking more to work matters. Therefore, I would like to look at some practical tips that will help you be better and stronger.

1. Multitasking is not cool. Cool is when you complete any task you start with very high quality. Then you take on another task and do it again. Finish everything you start. When you answer the call, be 100% involved in the dialogue. You read the letter in the mail - give an answer. And so is any matter, no matter how insignificant.
2. Plan your day, week, month, etc. Write down all the tasks that need to be done. Then rank them by importance and speed of execution. Accordingly, first of all, do those things that can be completed quickly and easily. You will see that the list of tasks has become much easier. But there are still difficult tasks in it - break them into parts, so you can move little by little every day towards completing a large and complex task.
3. Set reminders for yourself on your phone or computer. If you realize that your calendar is full, or you forget many things, then feel free to set yourself reminders. This way you will work better and accomplish more.

It often happens that you have done a lot, but in fact have not completed anything. This happens due to the fact that you were distracted by many things at the same time, that is, you did not concentrate and did not approach the task well. Or they did not optimize the execution of any task, for example, they held a meeting for too long or took on new task, although you understand that you don’t have time to do a lot on time. It is very important to evaluate your actual employment; standardizing your day (timing) will help with this. Try writing down your entire day for a couple of days, from first to last minute. You can evaluate your own inefficiency.

In general, a huge problem with humanity is that no one values ​​the time of others. This manifests itself in many ways. An example of how this is reflected in work:

You wrote a letter and indicated that you were waiting for a response from the addressee, but he, in turn, did not respond. At the same time, you cannot let go of the task because you have not yet been answered. You write again, call and ask for an answer. It is obvious that you have wasted a lot of time.

Your manager/colleague organized a meeting that lasted two hours, although it was planned for 20 minutes, it turns out that 1 hour 40 minutes is time that was spent ineffectively. You had to reschedule previously scheduled tasks and think about when to finish your today's tasks.

Therefore, it is extremely important to think about your colleagues, it is important not to steal the time of others.

Even as children, we are told that in order to do everything, we need to start assignments on time. But the problem is that we simply forget about them or push them aside because of what we consider to be more important matters.

The working day of a responsible employee most often consists of:

• Events strictly defined in the calendar

Such events have exact time beginning and ending, for example, meetings, negotiations, presentations, training, interviewing, etc.

• Routines

These are daily tasks that can be performed simultaneously and in parallel with each other. Their number is not constant, and the exact start and end times of work on them are unknown. This could be: making decisions on daily tasks, advising subordinates on urgent issues, preparing daily reports, sorting mail, etc.

In the process of work, a responsible employee, faced with the need to organize his working time and the time of his subordinates, most often resort to the help of calendars and systems related to setting tasks. But in practice, these tools are not always able to give the desired result.

Thus, calendars help to take into account the time of only those events in which the employee is 100% busy. However, such a tool does not work when performing daily routine tasks, when the work does not require a full-time employee, or when time is allocated in small parts to perform several tasks at once.

Classic automation systems, called “task trackers,” allow you to track target completion dates for tasks. But the employee still needs to keep in mind when he should start performing a particular task. If an employee works in strict multitasking mode, then the task may not be started, even if the expected start date has passed. The so-called student syndrome arises and the risk of failure to complete tasks on time increases.

Typically, in this mode of operation, there are two main problems that the above tools cannot help with:

• the difficulty of determining the importance of a task at the time of its receipt, and its priority in relation to other tasks;
• error in determining the percentage of the employee’s actual workload at the time of making the decision to take on the task.

In search optimal solution, company "First Form" developed for my automated system a new mechanism that allows you to avoid student syndrome, circumvent the impossibility of working with unstructured time, and objectively assess the real employment of employees.

Its work is based on a combination of two methods: volume-calendar and daily planning.

1. Volume-calendar method

IN this method one value indicates the number of working hours (days, minutes) that must be spent on performing the work within the interval of its duration, i.e. the specified labor hours can be spent at any time, during the period from the beginning of the work to its completion.

2. Daily plan

The method allows you to specify a specific day (date) during which labor hours will be spent. In this case, several values ​​can be assigned to one task. different dates. The method allows you to enter both planned and actual labor costs.

Both methods can be used simultaneously.

Estimation of labor costs using the volume-calendar method can be performed in two ways:

• the user can receive an assessment from the outside; for example, a manager allocates the total number of hours to complete a task;
• the user himself contributes his planned labor costs in any time units; At the same time, you have the opportunity to accept the entered time from your supervisor or specialized specialist.

After this, “First Form” automatically distributes the volume of the calendar plan over individual days in the period of time between the start date and the date of planned completion of the task. Thus, the values ​​of the daily plan are obtained: the number of planned working hours for each day.

The built-in algorithm distributes hours according to the “early-start” rule, when the maximum working hours occur at the beginning of the working period. This allows you to immediately get rid of the student syndrome and reduce the risk of overdue tasks.

Of course, automation may not know some details and features of the work being performed. Therefore, developers, instead of improving and complicating the system, provide the user with the opportunity to independently adjust the plan proposed by the system and manually enter the distribution of hours by day:

Thus, there is a transition from entering the total number of hours for a task to a daily distribution.

Based on the received data, the system builds time sheet employee. In this view, you can see what tasks and in what quantity the performer must deal with during each day so that the entire amount of necessary work is completed on time for each task.

In this interface, the user, observing all his expected workload for each day, can reschedule his own work, i.e. transfer planned labor hours from one date to another. This allows the employee to provide himself with the most comfortable, even workload, without any damage to the deadlines for completing tasks.

If the daily distribution was performed by any method (automatically or manually, from the form of a separate task or through the Timesheet), then in the “First Form” it is formed agenda- Agenda.

The Agenda tells the employee what tasks and how much he should allocate his time to. work time. It includes both static tasks from the working calendar and tasks for which time was allocated using the daily planning method.

AND Agenda, And Time sheet do not provide a clear distribution of start and finish times for tasks during the working day. But they allow the employee to see the daily work plan for each task, and effectively plan his day and week. An employee who uses the Agenda every day is free from the risk of not completing a task on time - he just needs to spend his time on work recommended by the system.

Another one important feature“First Form” - the use of daily labor costs when preparing reports on the planned workload of performers. The fundamental difference is that these reports take into account individual characteristics performance of each task, and exactly how the employee distributed his working time throughout its entire duration.

A manager analyzing a department’s work plan can be sure: if there are free hours on an employee’s Timesheet, they can be used to complete a newly received task, while all other work will not be affected and will be completed on time.

Additional information on the website of the company "First Form"

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“I can’t break myself,” we periodically shout, but in our hearts we are proud that we skillfully handle several things at the same time, like Julius Caesar. However, the word “multitasking” or “multitasking” was first used in the sixties of the 20th century. in the field of data processing. The translation of task speaks for itself. The concept described the ability of a computer to perform several tasks simultaneously, but then this term began to be used in psychology. Multitasking translated from English means “multitasking”.

Multitasking and computer technology

However, in the field of data processing and in the field of human performance, this concept is different. The first implies that multitasking is a mode in which more than one task is being processed, but they are not performed simultaneously, but alternately. The illusion of parallel execution of tasks is created due to frequent switching central processor from one task to another. Task translated from English, as we have already found out, is “task” or “task”.

Multitasking mode

Psychologist Reginald Tapas confidently stated that multitasking is a feeling of omnipotence. Psychologists compare a person working in multitasking mode with the image of a human computer who is not afraid of any obstacles in life. IN modern world People are already used to reading on the go, sending messages while driving, playing games and talking on the phone at the same time, performing many tasks at once. All this seems simple and easy, but it is only because of this “multitasking” that serious errors in documentation are made or car accidents occur.

In fact, a person, like a computer, works in multitasking mode, switching from one task to another again and again, rather than doing several things at the same time.

What does science say?

In truth, human brain simply unable to handle more than two complex tasks at one time. This conclusion was reached by scientists from National Institute health and medical research in Paris. The scientists' experiment was quite simple: participants performed two tasks at the same time, and professors watched them. brain activity. A functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner was used for the study. During the experiment, it was found that when performing two tasks at once, the brain activates two frontal lobes to work. Since the minimum program was completed, the next goal set before the participants in the multitasking experiment was to complete three tasks simultaneously. However, the experiment was not successful; the subjects constantly forgot about one of the three tasks and made serious mistakes. As a result, scientists came to the conclusion that a person can switch between two things quickly and clearly, but large quantity I can no longer pull my brain. This fact is explained quite simply: this is because we have only two frontal lobes that can be used in the process of brain activity. But still, who did several things at the same time? The first one who comes to everyone's mind is Julius Caesar.

What can result in constant switching?

The executive functions of the brain are responsible for switching from one task to another. The essence of these functions is to control mental activity. Thanks to this, people are determined when, how and in what sequence to carry out assigned tasks.

Control of thought processes

Multitasking is an executive control function that occurs in two stages:

• Initially, a decision comes to do a specific task, then the goal changes to another task.
• Next is activated new role multitasking is a transition from the rules of the previous task to the rules of the new one.

Usually it takes a few tenths of a second to switch between goals, but if a person switches often enough, the brain begins to work more slowly. The switching time gradually increases.

Naturally, a person may not pay attention to this slow work if, for example, he is washing dishes and watching a movie at the same time. However, things take a completely different turn when important role safety plays. Who multitasks? For example, a driver who is driving and talking on the phone: in critical situations, even a split second can become decisive and lead to irreparable events.

Disadvantages of Multitasking

Despite the fact that many businessmen, employers, and professors praise the so-called multitasking, this “superpower” has its drawbacks. Due to the fact that in multitasking mode we simply quickly switch from one task to another, the brain works slower, and productivity decreases. This is because we have to re-remember information that relates to the task we are switching to. This is why the brain gets tired much faster than with focused and concentrated work on one thing.

No concentration and focus

For those people who get used to working in multitasking mode, focusing on one task becomes a problem. In an ordinary average person, the brain knows how to ignore signals that are unnecessary for solving a given task and can concentrate strictly on one goal. But when the habit of working in multitasking mode is developed and many tasks are performed at once, the brain begins to get confused and does not always understand which information is important for solving a task and which should be ignored.

Multitasking = Lack of willpower

When the brain gets used to multitasking, a person's attention becomes scattered, and decision-making processes, critical and rational thinking slow down. The brain quickly gets tired, and willpower drops to zero. In this case, due to a decrease in willpower, the person is in decline and in a bad mood. These negative emotions deprived of motivation, in the end everything grows like a snowball, overlapping each other, which leads to a decrease in willpower.

How to learn focus and concentration

Such bad habit, as a lack of attention, can be corrected, you just need to follow the following rules:

• The most important tasks are in the morning. Get into the habit of making a to-do list for the day, for the week in the evening. The most difficult and important tasks should be completed in the morning, during the first hours of the working day. In this case, you won’t have to worry about not being able to do something in time or letting someone down, everything will be under control.
• Get rid of all distractions. For example, if you are a big fan of scrolling through the news feed on Facebook or Instagram, then it is better to turn them off while working. Social media and funny videos only get in the way and don’t help at all.
• Learn to think strategically so as not to confuse important matters with urgent ones. Only with strategic thinking can a person plan for the long term, which will allow him to clearly understand which tasks need to be completed immediately and which ones to leave for later. Only by concentrating can a person do much more than if he scatters his attention on several things at the same time.
• Don't forget about rest! Of course, hard work never harmed anyone, but no one canceled rest either. Take short breaks and remember to take one day off a week to recharge your batteries and work even harder. And of course, the best way to rest is a full eight-hour sleep.

To work more efficiently, you should minimize the need for multitasking.

How to be productive

To reduce the need to multi-task and increase your productivity, you should pay attention to the following tips:

• The best place to start is preparation. It's even worse if we don't finish one task and immediately start another. If you start work on a project without the necessary information and strategy, you may not finish what you started. Therefore, before you begin a new, previously unexplored task, carefully study what you have to work with and draw up an action plan.
• Do not try to start new business until the previous ones are closed. This will lead to a lot of confusion and minimal results.
• Without a system of priorities - nowhere. Each employee has a significant role in the overall work and must clearly understand what is required of him. Highlight a priority task correctly and daily or weekly.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with working in multitask mode at some moments if necessary. However, you shouldn’t allow a person’s multitasking to consume every area of ​​life. Especially when working on serious projects. The pitfall of multitasking is not yet fully understood.

False multitasking

American psychologists Sanbonmatsu and Strayer came to the conclusion that there is a type of people who are prone to “false multitasking.” They are characterized by specific features:

• Such people cannot keep their attention on one thing for a long time.
• They cannot stand routine, monotonous work.
• They are constantly looking for new sensations and do not stand still.
• They often act impulsively, without thinking, and it is also difficult for them to control themselves.

People prone to false multitasking focus on quickly receiving rewards or approval. They do not take into account the risks that the work may entail. If in the morning you try to do everything possible and impossible, and by the evening you discover that half of the tasks need to be postponed until tomorrow, multitasking is not for you. On the one hand, such multitasking work is tempting, but on the other hand, it brings chaos.