Are you guilty of Splat Head?  If you’re multitasking and proud of it, think again…

We cannot control the parade of thoughts marching through our minds. But we can choose which ones we will give our attention to. Picture your thoughts as people passing by the front of your home. Just because they’re walking by doesn’t mean you have to invite them in.

— Unknown

I’m guilty of Splat Head; I multitask as often as I can.  How about you? On her blog, Christine Kane writes about multitasking – and she seems equate it to a disease:

Many of us – especially artists, creative types, and the self-employed – catch Attention Splatter. It’s insidious. We’re so good at multi-tasking and being available to all things at all times that we don’t even realize that we’re only half present to any given one of them. Our attention is splattered.

Interestingly enough, as much as we publicly disparage multi-tasking, many of us secretly believe it’s a skill, something that some people do well, and many of us count ourselves as among that “do well” crowd.  Somehow those insidious, sneaky little tasks nibble away at our consciousness and lull us into believing we’re better off doing the many instead of the few.

Splat Head Not Good Practice

Like hat hair, splat head is NOT a good thing!  Peter Bregman writes in the Harvard Business Review Online:

Doing several things at once is a trick we play on ourselves, thinking we’re getting more done. In reality, our productivity goes down by as much as 40%. We don’t actually multitask. We switch-task, rapidly shifting from one thing to another, interrupting ourselves unproductively, and losing time in the process.

You might think you’re different, that you’ve done it so much you’ve become good at it. Practice makes perfect and all that. But you’d be wrong. Research shows that heavy multitaskers are less competent at doing several things at once than light multitaskers. In other words, in contrast to almost everything else in your life, the more you multitask, the worse you are at it. Practice, in this case, works against you.

Attention = Stretching Toward

Eons ago, I took Latin in high school and became fascinated with the origins of our English words. For instance, if you parse out the word “attention” into Old Latin, you find that “ad” means “toward”; and “tendere” means “stretch”.  So one could argue that true meaning of “attention” is: stretching toward.

I love that definition of attention because it creates a very visual reminder that attention-splatter really is inattention, or, a “withdrawal from” instead of a “stretching toward”.  And if a thing is important enough to do, shouldn’t it also be important enough to attend to, to stretch toward?

How to Stop Multi-Tasking

Bregman goes on to suggest a couple of tactics for reducing our tendencies to multi-task; here are a few of his suggestions:

First, the obvious: the best way to avoid interruptions is to turn them off. Often I write at 6 am when there’s nothing to distract me, I disconnect my computer from its wireless connection and turn my phone off. In my car, I leave my phone in the trunk. Drastic? Maybe. But most of us shouldn’t trust ourselves.

Second, the less obvious: Use your loss of patience to your advantage. Create unrealistically short deadlines. Cut all meetings in half. Give yourself a third of the time you think you need to accomplish something. There’s nothing like a deadline to keep things moving. And when things are moving fast, we can’t help but focus on them.

He also acknowledges that “sometimes it is simply impossible to resist a little multitasking”:

As I was writing this, Daniel, my two-year-old son, walked into my office, climbed on my lap, and said “Monsters, Inc. movie please.” So, here we are, I’m finishing this piece on the left side of my computer screen while Daniel is on my lap watching a movie on the right side of my computer screen. [sweet image!]

When that happens, Leo Babauta of zenhabits.net suggests a useful tactic:

There are times when an interruption is so urgent that you cannot put it off until you’re done with the task at hand. In that case, try to make a note of where you are (writing down notes if you have time) with the task at hand, and put all the documents or notes for that task together and aside (perhaps in an “action” folder or project folder).

Here are two more of Babauta’s eleven ways to “work simpler for good mental health”:

First thing in the morning, work on your Most Important Task. Don’t do anything else until this is done. Give yourself a short break, and then start on your next Most Important Task. If you can get 2-3 of these done in the morning, the rest of the day is gravy.

If you feel the urge to check your email or switch to another task, stop yourself. Breathe deeply. Re-focus yourself. Get back to the task at hand.

So, to all my fellow Splat Heads I say: lose the splat head, take a time out and make some changes.  Focus and stretch your attention toward those things that really matter!

Guilty of Splat Head?  Stretch!