Forget Everything You've Heard About Multitasking. Here's How to Juggle a Busy Day and Still Make Time for Meaningful Work

The morning I decided to write this article, I sat at my desk at Jotform and opened a Google document in one browser, then used another to queue up an email for later that day. While I waited for the latter to schedule (there's usually a short lag), I popped into a calendar app and blocked out a couple of hours to focus on writing, and also updated an appointment with my trainer. Then, still riding an early morning motivational high, I silenced my devices and got to work.

---

---

It's fitting, I thought at the time, that I was multitasking to prepare myself to write an article about that very thing. Today, the act of undertaking and balancing a variety of tasks simultaneously is increasingly considered to actually be bad for productivity , but I think the truth is more nuanced. After all, it's entirely natural to focus on two things at once. Animals — from fish and octopuses to monkeys and pigeons — are multitaskers. Research from Ruhr-Universitaet-Bochum in Germany has found, in fact, that pigeons do it even better than humans.

There may be a fine line between accomplishing several things simultaneously and being overcome by distractions, but in my experience, it's possible to embrace both the benefits of multitasking and the importance of dedicating undivided attention to meaningful work — what I like to term "the big stuff."

When juggling tasks is a good thing

Back to the animal world for a moment: To me, octopuses are awe-inspiring creatures. If you think patting your head and rubbing your belly at the same moment is challenging, imagine controlling eight arms at once. But as researchers have pointed out, the eight-limbed mollusks aren't necessarily using cognition (at least as we know it) to control each arm: a central brain merely decides which one to activate and then the creature's peripheral nervous system takes over from there.

While there are certain activities that we humans undertake without attention (such as breathing), most require at least some focus, and anytime that's required, the prefrontal cortex fires up and coordinates messages with other areas of the brain. When you focus, both the right and left sides of that cortex work together. Notably, however, when you try to focus on two things at once, those sides no longer function in harmony: productivity and performance both suffer. An exception is when we learn to complete a task while multitasking, particularly when one of the tasks is relatively rote or mechanical.

Another important consideration here has to do with perception. A study published in a 2018 edition of the Association for Popular Science's journal found that the mere sense that we are competently multitasking can boost performance. I noticed this during the process of preparing this article: Once I knocked out several items of busywork simultaneously, I felt that I was firing on all cylinders, and was able to dive into writing.

Oftentimes, multitasking is actually the act of rapid task switching, and it's important to keep in mind that when we pivot from one thought process to another, we risk suffering the consequences of what University of Washington Bothell business professor Sophie Leroy terms "attention residue." Put simply, when pivoting from one task to another, attention doesn't immediately follow. Instead, a residue of thoughts about the original task remains. This effect can be particularly powerful when one task is engaging and the other, well, isn't (say, writing an inspirational article, then turning to tax prep). Unfortunately, of course, task switching is unavoidable. While it would be great to hole up and spend days solely focused on meaningful work, for most of us that isn't an option.

How to balance task switching and deep work

Author and Wharton School professor Adam Grant is an exemplary high-achiever. In his bestselling book, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World , Cal Newport examines Grant's unique work methods. One of particular note is that the professor batches hard but important intellectual work into long, uninterrupted stretches. "Within the year," Newport explains, "he stacks his teaching into the fall semester, during which he can turn all of his attention to teaching well and being available to his students… By batching his teaching in the fall, Grant can then turn his attention fully to research in the spring and summer, and tackle this work with less distraction."

Importantly, Grant also batches daily tasks. Writing for the New York Times in 2019, he shared some aspects of managing attention on a smaller scale. For starters, Grant points out that there's task order: Keeping in mind the aforementioned attention residue effect, he recommends tackling a boring task after a moderately interesting one, then saving the most exciting task as a reward. He also recommends being mindful of energy levels. Morning people, for example, can benefit from doing analytical work in the day's early hours, taking on busy work shortly after lunch and creative work in the late afternoon or evening. For night owls, such a schedule might simply be reversed.

Interestingly, it's not always better to do deep work in long stretches. As Grant notes, evidence shows that binge-writers sometimes get less done than people who write in shorter stretches. The key is focus: When I sit down to write, I shut out all distractions, even if that period of work only lasts for 15 or 20 minutes.

I've long been a proponent of automating busywork, and just last year wrote a book devoted to the concept. I've found that determining the tools, apps and other systems that effectively remove busywork from our plates requires a true investment. But over the long term, the result is both economized time and more mental energy for that "big stuff."

The key is acknowledging that markedly distinct types of work will always exist, and that being thoughtful about how we manage them is the challenge. With just two arms and one brain, we can multitask and task switch, yet still carve out time for uninterrupted and meaningful work — feel productive in both everyday tasks like scheduling, as well as personally compelling projects.