Dan Faggella - Combining Tasks

Even when you’ve learned how to do things more effectively, you may very well realize that combining tasks will be more efficient in certain instances. For example, you may have realized the very fastest route to drive to your fiend’s house… but you can do plenty of other engaging, “productive” things while you drive that best route.

I’ve sometimes heard general statements like: “multi-tasking will only slow you down, its proven that while multitasking people are actually less productive.”

I can see some truth in a statement like this. In fact what I “see” is a hilarious mental image. I see a guy cutting his toenails, replying to emails with his other foot, and trying to hold a corporate webcam meeting and pour creamer into his coffee at the same time. It is obvious that combining tasks randomly will likely result in disaster… and big time potential humor.

“Multitasking is only unproductive when different tasks compete for the same limited human resources available us.”

This is my recent realization, and I’ve had a lot of fun experimenting with this idea without even realizing that this is the concept I’ve been playing with until recently.

Any activity you name can be said to take up a certain amount of your human resources – this usually involves different and potentially varying amounts of use or energy from different aspects of our faculties.

For instance, driving a car usually involves at least one arm, the majority of our vision focus, some of our hearing focus, some other conscious attention to make sense of the scene around us, and at least one foot to push the pedals.

The vast majority of you make phone calls and listen to music while driving because you’re able to use the rest of your latent conscious attention and hearing capacity to fully draw from a phone conversation, fun album, or audio program. Heck, some people learn most of a foreign language simply while driving.

However, we might all consider an activity like reading books to be “unproductive” (frankly… deadly) while driving, because it needs a degree of vision that you cannot let go of while still driving. Your tasks are competing too much for that key resource (and possibly other resources, like your conscious attentional focus).

Trying to keep track of all of our “resources” and all of our “activities” might be pretty overwhelming, and its certainly not necessary. I’ve made a simple model of distinctions to categorize our faculties:

So how does this apply to increasing productivity? We apply these ideas to pair up tasks that do not involve the same resources within us and so we can accomplish simultaneously.

Most people instinctively have an idea about this, and they take advantage of it when they listen to music when they drive.

However, we might get a little bit deeper. How about making sure that our lunch is a sandwich so we can check emails or look for an online article (or do anything that can be done when one arm and the mouth are being used towards the task of eating) with our time during lunch? With spaghetti or a big salad, we might spill on our work, and at the very least we need to look at the food before we eat it. A sandwich doesn’t require this.

How about eating breakfast and looking at your project list at the same time? Instead of reading the cereal box in front of you (which likely doesn’t further any of your major life goals), you gain a bit of perspective on what you will be able to work on in the day.

The easiest of all of these combinations is listening to educational audio programs while you exercise or drive. This is time when your hearing resource (physical) is usually not taken up, and since your intellectual capacity (attentional focus) is not being used either, you’re able to learn and drive. Brilliant!

It is still very possible that going about multiple activities can work against us. If we are driving in a very unfamiliar place where we must engage our minds fully, listening to audio programs likely will not be effective. If we are cycling so hard of the stationary bike that we are shaking and drenched in sweat, reading a book might be out of the question.

If you are on the fence as to wether your resources are being competed for, they probably are and you aught to hone in on only one or find a different activity to pair with the first.

Some activities involve certain resources in oscillation – they involve attentional focus, then they don’t. They involve some physical resource, then they don’t.

A good example of this would be periods where you are waiting for your computer to load, or you are waiting for another text message.

“Waiting” itself is a dirty word in the productivity world. We aught always to engage ourselves in activity that moves us toward our highest goals is we are interested in achieving them.

If we know that there will be tasks with intermittent engagement, we can plan for them by preparing other activities.

* I am making call to my phone company and I am always put on hold. I may leave my text messaging for the day to be done during that time when I have little intermittent blips of time when I have nothing I can do to move my phone company objectives forward. This way I can do something with my thumbs other than twiddling them – maybe make a few appointments, set some plans, keep in touch, shoot out some invites, gather some information, etc…

* You are doing some online research and you know that most of your time will be spend rummaging through links without doing to much thinking (IE: without much involvement with the intellectual resources). When you find articles that are worthwhile you will read them and make notes. You might plan to listen to an audio program while you “sift” the web. There is no need to keep your intellectual capacities unused when you have the hearing faculty open as well. This way, as you do your research and use very minimal brain capacity, you can be engaged in learning nonetheless.

* You are cooking a meal, periodically you must wait for the water to boil or let something sit in the over or on the stove. Making a phone call at these times wouldn’t be logical because you wouldn’t be able to gauge the length of the phone call and the amount of time between steps in the cooking process. Instead, you might read an interesting article you’ve been meaning to get around to.

Applying this simple rule can allow for so much additional productive activity. I’ll give you a few more quick examples from my own life. Take some of these and play around with them, find ways to get things done in your own unique activities.

Lately I’ve been listening to audio programs in my car and periodically pausing to voice record the most poignant points on my phone. Then when I’m on break from my internship I take these “audio notes” and record them into a “keeper” file on my computer.

I’m also always carrying a small notepad with me, one small enough to fit in a pocket. When I’ve got a second at my internship, I jot down things I’ve learned so that I can record them later as well. Its a great way to use up those periods in inactivity.

In summary, it might not be a good idea to try to put on your pants, brush your teeth, and shave at the same time – but if we can understand what we are “using” from ourselves at any given time, we can fill the remainder of our potential with meaningful activity.

Dan Faggella spends his life cultivating the practice and understanding of fulfillment and human potential. He currently runs a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu academy and writes his blog at www.lifeexp.wordpress.com.

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