0:10

Welcome to another episode of At The Table

0:12

with Patrick Lincione, where everything we talk about

0:14

is related to organizational health and

0:16

the world of work. I'm your host, Pat Lincione, and

0:19

I'm joined by Cody and

0:22

Tracy on mic. How are you guys doing today? Fantastic.

0:25

You're doing better than me. I'm sick. I think

0:27

everybody can kind of tell by my voice. I'm sitting

0:30

in my office at home, have my microphone here, and

0:32

I'm doing one from the home

0:34

office. We've got Karen and Matt helping

0:36

us out today. And Cody,

0:39

what is our topic? Multitasking

0:42

sucks. That's right. We slipped this

0:44

one in there again. We haven't used that sucks in

0:46

our title in a long time. Multitasking

0:49

sucks. And frankly, it was hard to title this

0:51

episode because there's a few different things we want

0:53

to talk about. But all of it related to

0:57

this concept that multitasking is good

0:59

and that being interrupted and doing

1:01

many things at once is somehow

1:03

a sign of efficiency when we're

1:05

pretty convinced that it's really bad

1:08

for our productivity. It's bad for

1:10

our mental health. It's bad for

1:12

being able to focus. And that's what

1:14

we're going to talk about today because it's something that all

1:17

of us struggle with. And the

1:19

world seems to make it easier and

1:21

easier for us to live in constant

1:23

interruption. And

1:25

we want to explore that today and talk about maybe how we can change

1:27

that and why it's not such a good idea. This

1:30

should be fun, Pat. I think the idea

1:32

that you teased out, which is that we've

1:34

come to sort of idealize

1:37

or idolize people who can multitask. And

1:39

so we've come to reward or think

1:41

that that's what we should all be

1:44

capable of without understanding

1:46

the effects of that. And

1:48

I would even go a bit further. I heard

1:51

somebody say one time, hey, there is no such

1:53

thing as multitasking. You're

1:55

not actually capable of doing many things at one time because

1:57

your brain is focused on one of those. to

2:00

switch faster than other people, but

2:03

we're really wired to be doing

2:05

one thing at a time. Right.

2:07

And in fact, like you said, unless somehow you have

2:09

two brains in your head, can you really do two

2:12

things at once, or is it just a matter of

2:14

going back and forth constantly? And one of the things

2:16

we were going to call this episode is the

2:19

danger of switching costs, because

2:22

the cost of going from one subject

2:24

to another is massive.

2:28

And at the end of a day when you're constantly

2:30

switching back and forth, you go, did I get anything

2:32

done? Or was I just constantly going back and forth?

2:35

And that's to say nothing of the impact it's

2:37

having on our brain and our psyche and all

2:39

those other things. So yeah,

2:41

multitasking probably doesn't really exist.

2:44

What we do is we just go back and

2:46

forth. And that's a problem. And

2:48

I think it might be even related to, and we hadn't

2:50

talked about this before the episode, so I'm curious what you

2:53

think about this. The idea that real

2:56

effective work takes a longer

2:58

period of focus than... So

3:01

if you're multitasking, if we're switching

3:03

back and forth really rapidly, it's

3:05

likely that you're working on less

3:07

consequential things. You can't

3:09

get something significant done that

3:12

quickly. What do you

3:14

think about that, Pat? Do you think the idea

3:16

that some of the stuff

3:18

that requires a longer period of focus

3:20

is more significant to work? I

3:24

absolutely think that's true. And I think about writing

3:26

a book, for instance. I would say that would be on

3:28

the higher order of having to focus and really think about

3:31

things. There's no way that somebody could convince me that I

3:33

could write a book in three-minute

3:35

increments in between checking my email

3:38

and doing

3:40

three different things, taking phone calls and all

3:42

that other kind of stuff. And I think

3:44

most of us know the most important things

3:46

we do or challenging things require levels of

3:48

focus. So the more

3:50

we're multitasking, the more we're essentially saying,

3:52

I'm not doing the most important things.

3:56

And I think if we look back

3:58

at our days, it's rare that we... spent more

4:00

than eight

4:02

minutes on any one thing without

4:04

getting interrupted. And so we're

4:07

probably deviating toward the lower

4:09

end of the

4:11

things we're doing in terms of importance. It's

4:15

funny. We joked about this a little bit before

4:17

the episode, Pat, that Bo challenged me

4:19

to a pushup competition that we're going to try

4:21

to do in the middle of January. But

4:23

in order to get ready for that, I've

4:26

had a timer set on my phone that

4:28

goes off every five minutes. And

4:30

that was just today. This is the first time I've done

4:32

it. But this was so ironic that when

4:34

I got on to talk to you about this

4:36

and you told me about the topic, I

4:38

had been experiencing getting interrupted every

4:41

five minutes for the first

4:43

three or four hours at work today. And

4:46

so firsthand, like I'd be writing an

4:48

email and my timer would go off and I'd

4:50

get on the ground and do 10 pushups. So

4:53

I've experienced the switching cost and how hard

4:55

it is to get your brain focused back

4:57

on to what is most important. And

5:00

I don't know if you could just hear that

5:02

my computer just chimed because I

5:04

don't know how to silence this or put

5:06

it on hold because I'm totally lame with

5:08

technology. But this computer

5:11

is geared toward interrupting me. It's constantly telling

5:13

me if a new message came in, if

5:15

a new piece of news came in or

5:17

a new product advertisement or something like that.

5:20

It is designed to

5:22

prevent me from staying focused for

5:24

more than about three minutes. And

5:28

you know what, I would say that

5:30

this also translates. This experience we have

5:32

in life day to day translates into

5:34

our meetings, too. I feel

5:36

like so many of our meetings that we

5:39

go to, we're doing the same thing. We're

5:41

going from one topic to another. And it's

5:43

it's confusing. Absolutely.

5:45

Which is why we are so

5:47

adamant about having different not combining

5:49

different kinds of meetings into one,

5:51

because if you're going from tactic

5:53

to strategy to long term to

5:55

short term, that's hard enough. And

5:58

and even within each. even if we're

6:00

having good focused meetings, even then it's

6:02

easy for people to change the topic.

6:05

So there seems to be like a

6:07

social phenomenon going on where

6:09

people are just reluctant to stay focused

6:12

on one thing at a time. Hey,

6:14

I'm not sure that 10 years from

6:16

now, anyone will

6:18

be reading long books or books longer

6:21

than 100 pages. And

6:25

people don't like to go to the movies. I

6:27

say to my kids, hey, let's go to the

6:29

movies or let's watch a movie. And they're like,

6:31

nah, that's too much time commitment. And

6:34

even during movies, one of my pet peeves in life, I

6:36

was watching a movie with one of my sons the other

6:38

day, they cannot watch

6:40

an entire movie without going onto their phone and texting

6:42

each other back and forth. And

6:45

it's just crazy to me to think

6:47

that this has all changed so fast.

6:49

And I suppose the cell phone and

6:51

the computer are the reasons why

6:53

it has. And so now I sound

6:55

like a grumpy old man. I

6:58

mean, it certainly could sound that

7:00

way, but I think the way

7:02

that we're teaming this up is

7:04

this has like very real implications

7:06

for work and being successful in

7:08

companies and getting the right

7:10

things done and making sure we're allocating

7:12

our time and energy and resources on

7:14

the right things. And I think you're

7:16

absolutely right, Pat. I think not just

7:18

the alerts that we get on our

7:20

phone or our computer, it's designed to

7:22

distract us and interrupt us. But

7:26

I was even thinking while you were talking

7:28

about that, you had once talked about a

7:30

piece of technology called Microsoft Context. And

7:32

I think that that's even exacerbated now. I think it'd be

7:35

fun for you to share that. Yeah,

7:37

Microsoft called us up there years ago. They

7:39

have people doing just research, taking research sabbaticals.

7:41

And a guy from Microsoft called and said,

7:43

come on up here and talk to us

7:45

about, any ideas you might have.

7:48

And I was thinking about like on

7:50

my computer, and I actually think this might

7:52

solve for the problem because I would like

7:54

to know what the context of my life

7:56

is, but not have it jumping out at

7:58

me all the time. But we

8:00

came up with this concept called Microsoft Context,

8:02

which would be the different parts of your

8:04

life displayed around the screen. I know most

8:06

people would say, well, that already exists, but

8:09

I have a thousand of them. I would

8:11

like to have five things on my screen,

8:15

where I could see what's my schedule today, who

8:17

are the most important people in my life, what

8:19

am I working on right now, and just a

8:21

few things like that. Anyway, the point is, we

8:25

want to have everything in context, but we don't want

8:27

it flying at us all the time. We're

8:29

constantly changing our mindset, which

8:33

is what most of us end up doing. It

8:35

would be interesting to talk about, we discussed

8:39

how would you solve for this, because I

8:41

think it's even more exacerbated, not

8:44

just that the computer is that way, but

8:46

our meetings now on Zoom. I feel like

8:48

you get used to

8:50

be, you even have five minutes in

8:52

between walking from one conference room to

8:54

another conference room, and there was a

8:56

little bit of a mental palate clean

8:58

cleanser in that moment, but you now

9:00

go right up until people

9:02

stack meetings right on top of each other. So

9:05

you end one Zoom call, and you go right

9:07

into the next one, and the switching costs, like

9:09

you said, are pretty enormous. So

9:11

what should we, what do you do?

9:14

Well, I want to step back a little further, because when

9:16

we talk about Zoom, we're really talking a lot about working

9:18

at home too. And this concept

9:20

of the commute for so many people is

9:22

gone. And I have to say, so my

9:25

commute's about 12 minutes, and I'm very fortunate

9:27

that it's short. But, and I

9:29

wish it were just a little bit longer, because

9:32

there's something about having 20 minutes of

9:34

uninterrupted time in between,

9:36

even switching costs from going from home

9:38

to work or work back to home.

9:41

And we were talking about this the other day, Tracy and I

9:43

were about what we do during that time. And

9:46

I think that's when people often listen to

9:48

a podcast. And when we

9:51

started this podcast, we said, let's try to

9:53

keep it about 20 minutes or less, because

9:56

it's tough to find more than 20 minutes

9:58

to do one thing. And

10:00

so I love being able to be in

10:02

my car and having what I would consider

10:05

to be kind of guilt free time to

10:07

either listen to a podcast or have

10:09

a phone conversation with a friend where

10:12

I can actually focus for 15 minutes

10:15

and not like, okay, yeah, I'll talk to you later.

10:19

I got to go. And so I think not

10:21

commuting to work is actually been a very big

10:24

cause of interruption driven mindset

10:27

too. So that's one of

10:29

those things, the transition Karen in our

10:31

office, she has a house on Whidbey

10:33

Island up in the Seattle area. And

10:36

she talks about when you get on the ferry to cross,

10:38

it's like a 15 minute ferry ride. There's

10:40

something about just shutting down and sitting there and

10:42

looking at the trees or reading a book or,

10:46

or allowing yourself to have that

10:48

transition time. And I think that's

10:50

going away for more and more people. Well,

10:52

and I can speak to that personally, but

10:55

I was in the Lafayette office where you

10:57

guys are sitting now for eight years and

10:59

we moved our family to Utah. And

11:02

now my commute is walking out of

11:04

my home office and then my kids are standing

11:06

right there ready for me to be a dad.

11:10

And even though you're absolutely right, the

11:12

switching costs of walking out of my

11:14

office and going right into dad mode

11:17

is not good for my family or for

11:19

me. You know, like that 20 minute drive

11:21

that I used to have from the office

11:23

back home, that there's a

11:25

very real cost to not having a

11:27

little bit of margin baked into that

11:29

transition period. Cause you're, and

11:31

it makes me, I've even talked about like

11:34

with my wife, hey, right after I get

11:36

out of my last meeting, I need to

11:38

take a walk around the block or I

11:40

need to go upstairs and take a shower

11:42

before I enter into family mode because there's

11:45

some real payoff to that interim time. Yeah.

11:48

I can't believe I'm going to say this, but hey, that's what we

11:50

do on this podcast. One day the doctors

11:52

are going to invent a way for people to go

11:54

to the bathroom faster. You know what

11:56

I mean? And I think that that'll be a sad

11:58

day. Cause I think sometimes we'll. I'm just gonna go

12:00

in there and shut the door. It's peace. It

12:04

is, it's peace. And yet we should

12:06

find a way to deactivate our phones when

12:08

we're in there. Because then I think sometimes

12:10

we just bring that to you. Sometimes it's

12:12

the only place where you contemplate in the

12:14

shower and in the bathroom. And

12:16

maybe if you get a commute or you jog every once

12:18

in a while. So at the

12:20

risk of being too biological, I think

12:22

that we all crave like

12:25

peaceful downtime. And

12:27

I discovered something the other day, it was with

12:29

Beau who's not on today. I

12:31

was talking to him and I was getting in

12:33

the shower and I put my phone

12:35

on speaker and I put it in the corner of the

12:38

shower where it echoes. And I had

12:40

an entire conversation, unbeknownst to Beau, while

12:43

I was taking a shower. And

12:45

so it's invading every part of my

12:47

life. So yeah,

12:49

it's amazing how we have less

12:52

and less opportunity to focus.

12:54

And sometimes it's like writing a book

12:56

or working on a project or solving

12:58

a problem. But sometimes it's

13:00

just literally connecting with another person or

13:03

even entertainment. We're

13:07

now entertainment comes in bursts of about 45

13:10

seconds. Thank

13:12

you, TikTok and Twitter. I

13:15

think that it's amazing how little

13:18

time we spend doing any one

13:20

thing. And

13:22

for the people listening to this,

13:24

I would say one

13:26

of the things we have to do

13:28

is just start carving out time and

13:31

forcing ourself to sit

13:33

by ourselves and

13:35

do one thing, whether it's reading a book

13:37

or staring at a wall or going on

13:40

a walk with no technology and no ability

13:42

of somebody else to interrupt us. Yeah,

13:46

even last night, my wife and I were talking about,

13:49

and this is becoming more, it's so

13:51

interesting. For years we thought, oh,

13:53

we need email on our phone and all

13:55

of these things to make our

13:57

lives easier. And now there's companies who's entirely.

14:00

business is creating boxes for you to put your

14:02

phone in that has like a lock on it

14:04

for a certain amount of time, you know. So

14:07

the idea that you need, you need,

14:09

we were designed to need a

14:11

some downtime even from technology. So last

14:13

night my wife and I were like,

14:16

hey after 5 p.m. our phones go

14:18

in this drawer until we're ready to

14:20

go to bed. We had previously

14:22

used them as alarm clocks. We're gonna move

14:24

them outside of our bedroom to a different

14:26

room to charge. And so because it

14:29

does it, you wake up and right out of

14:31

the gate you feel like you

14:33

have to multitask or they're switching costs because

14:35

there's alerts that tell you what's most important

14:37

and you need the margin to decide

14:39

that on your own. You know one of the

14:41

hardest things as parents today is it

14:44

is one of the things that is the hardest thing

14:46

to regulate in your kids. I mean

14:48

the idea of saying, hey can you put that down? To

14:52

them is so anathema. They just don't

14:55

understand it. And there's been stories in the

14:57

media of kids killing their parents for taking

14:59

away their phone and which speaks to the

15:01

fact that there's something going on in the

15:03

wiring of our brain. There's some sort of

15:05

addiction going on here and

15:08

the idea that somebody might lose

15:10

their phone for even two hours

15:12

feels untenable. And none

15:14

of us are immune to that. But

15:16

so how do we make that not

15:18

the case in our office? Cody on

15:20

a podcast recently you talked about being

15:22

a galvanizer and the fact that

15:24

you would be comfortable walking up to people and

15:26

closing their laptop. And

15:31

the truth is is it is

15:33

about context because I thought that

15:36

the purpose of that is not just me being

15:38

a jerk. It's me saying like,

15:40

hey even we can decide together that

15:42

right now doing email and catching up

15:45

on what is on our laptop is

15:47

the most important thing. But let's make

15:49

a decision about that. And

15:51

so let's collectively say what is most important.

15:53

And so closing the the

15:55

laptops was the way of saying

15:58

like let's not let the calendar or the or

16:00

the most recent email that came through or the

16:02

most recent text message, determine what we're gonna work

16:04

on right now. Let's decide that.

16:06

In fact, I just

16:08

told the story of me working from home. I'm

16:11

sitting in the three-room new office

16:13

in Utah that we have. And so we

16:15

had these three rooms and we thought, hey,

16:17

how do we design our workspace to lend

16:20

itself to the right type of work? And

16:22

not to make this overly working genius oriented,

16:24

but we thought, what if one of the

16:26

rooms was just for wonder and invention? There's

16:28

no electronics allowed in there. It's only whiteboard.

16:31

And then the second room could be

16:34

activation where we're discerning and galvanizing. And

16:36

then we have a whole room dedicated to enable

16:38

mitten tenacity. So you'd have to

16:41

physically move yourself from one room

16:43

to the next to take on a different

16:45

type of work. And

16:47

that's not multitasking. I didn't

16:49

think of it in the context of this episode until now, but

16:52

the idea that we knew because of the physical

16:54

environment we are in what we're working on. I

16:56

think that's so interesting because normally what you'd say is there's

16:59

three of you and there's three rooms. So each of you

17:01

take an office. And what happens

17:03

then is each of you has an office

17:05

where you're getting distracted between all the different things

17:07

you do. And then it starts to settle into

17:09

more and more of the tactical interrupt driven

17:11

stuff. To actually organize

17:13

it. Imagine organizing your home. So there

17:16

were some rooms for just

17:18

contemplation and for being alone, a reading

17:20

room. We put a TV in every room

17:22

in our house. You go to a hotel

17:25

these days and there's a TV in the

17:27

bathroom, and there's a TV

17:29

in the mirror. So while you're brushing your

17:31

teeth or shaving, you can actually watch TV.

17:34

It really is crazy. And

17:37

the fact that we're willing to pay money to

17:40

restrict our access to technology that we

17:42

already pay money for is crazy.

17:48

It's true. And it just shows

17:50

that there's a problem. And I think

17:53

that's what's really fun about some of

17:55

the conversations we get to have on

17:57

this podcast, Pat, is you sort of

17:59

illuminate. or like the canary in the

18:01

coal mine of being like, Hey, I think this is

18:03

more of a problem than we think it is. We

18:05

keep celebrating the fact that people can quote

18:08

unquote multitask. And what we need

18:10

to be doing is celebrate effectiveness over

18:12

efficiency. Like we need to find

18:15

work that is effective and not necessarily say,

18:17

Hey, here's the list of things I got

18:19

done today. I checked them all

18:21

off. Yeah. Yeah. It's true. Because when

18:23

we, when we think about it like that, it's

18:25

assigning like one point to everything we got done.

18:27

And if you assigned points according

18:30

to the most important things that

18:32

got done, that would be a completely

18:34

different way. You know, have you ever looked at your

18:36

to do list? It's like, okay, I got to take

18:38

out the trash. I got to run this errand. I

18:40

got to do this. I got to do this. I

18:42

got to do this. I got to spend meaningful time

18:44

with my wife. I need to solve this big problem

18:46

at work. I got everything done but meaningful time with

18:48

my wife and solving a problem at work. But look

18:50

at all the little things I got, I got toothpaste

18:52

darn it. It's like they're not equally valuable. And

18:55

I think we put the same number

18:57

of points on everything we do

18:59

and think, well, I got most of my stuff done.

19:02

But did we get the most important thing done?

19:04

And I love what you said. Effectiveness

19:06

is more important than efficiency. I

19:09

think that's kind of at the root of all this. Hey,

19:11

here's I'm gonna make a suggestion to people. The

19:14

next time you have a meeting, actually

19:17

ask people to leave

19:19

their phone and their desk at their desk

19:22

or if it's not on Zoom to leave

19:24

their computer behind too. And I

19:26

know people are going to think you're crazy. They're going to think,

19:28

well, but that's my work tool. It's like, no, no, no, I

19:30

want your brain and I want your heart

19:33

and your mind and your attention. And

19:35

do you really need to have your technology with you

19:37

when you go to a meeting to decide things? I

19:40

think that the best meetings are when I have a whiteboard,

19:42

a pen, maybe a pad of paper and a

19:45

pencil. And just try that

19:47

a few times and see how things

19:49

change. And like our

19:51

kids, watch people probably rebel

19:54

about that. Yeah,

19:57

I even think that related to that is And

20:00

I don't want to make this too much of a meetings

20:02

podcast, but that's sort of some way that that we Defend

20:06

against this is coming to a meeting

20:08

without an agenda because that

20:10

the preconceived agenda is the thing

20:12

that like We still need to

20:15

discern what's the most important thing to talk about right

20:17

not that Let's let what we put

20:19

in order. It's sort of like the checklist You just

20:21

said is hey What were the first things that I

20:23

thought of and it was clean out

20:25

the kitty litter and get you know toothpaste

20:27

versus the big problems at work and so

20:30

even spending the first five minutes of your

20:32

meeting saying what is the most

20:34

important thing for us to talk about and

20:36

and Carving out time to focus

20:38

on that as opposed to okay. What's next

20:40

on the list for us to talk about

20:42

yeah Yeah, technology should be

20:44

a tool when we need it not a default Within

20:48

which we do everything which I

20:50

know is like flies in the face of

20:52

everything people say about the amazing modern discoveries

20:54

of technology And as good as they

20:56

are they've kind of come to dominate us and drive

20:58

us into more and more tactical things And

21:00

I think less and less joy So

21:03

let's let's take a stand and try

21:05

to try to avoid the interruption the

21:07

switching costs and keep things more focused

21:10

Alrighty Okay, that's

21:12

that's about 21 minutes. That's as long as

21:14

we can expect anyone to focus including ourselves

21:17

today, I have the the unpaid ad

21:20

and Darn it

21:22

if I'm not gonna I'm

21:24

gonna make an ad for antibiotics, and I know we're

21:26

not supposed to overuse them But

21:28

I am so glad that they exist I don't know

21:30

who invented them when they came about what exactly they

21:32

do But when I can't shake

21:34

something and I take antibiotics and two days later.

21:36

I'm better I'm pretty glad that

21:39

that somebody invented those Was

21:41

Benjamin Franklin you know what in fact

21:44

you're right in fact It's

21:46

lightning-based when he when he discovered lightning,

21:48

you know electricity he discovered antibiotics, too

21:51

So maybe I'm just coming from this isn't a very fun

21:53

one, but because I'm been under the weather I'm

21:55

glad for antibiotics go out and get yourself some

22:00

but only if you need them. I know people take too

22:02

many of them too, but I appreciate

22:04

them. So that's my Under the Weather

22:06

podcast, Unpaid Ad Today. And

22:09

I'm looking forward to feeling better on our next podcast,

22:11

and we'll look forward to talking to everybody then. Thanks

22:14

for joining us, everybody. God bless.