Tag: Multi-tasking

Concept of the Day: Continuous Partial Attention

I am sat at home and the TV is showing a programme that I like, but I’ve seen it before. I’m also engaged in general chit-chat with my wife. I occasionally look down at my phone as various notifications pop-up. Then my watch vibrates and tells me that it’s time to stand up. I am suddenly conscious that my wife is looking at me expecting a response. I know where the conversation was going, but somewhere in my automated switching between stimuli I’ve lost the thread and it’s floating away. This is where I have a choice, I can try to style my way out of the situation and hope that a chuckle and a smile is enough to get things going forward in the hope that the thread will return, or I can own up to being distracted again, take the consequences of this revelation, and continue watching the TV, engaging in the chit-chat and flicking through my phone. Another possibility is that I apologise for being a poor husband turn the TV off and put the phone out in the foyer and seek to engage fully in a conversation with my wife.

This is the world that we live in. This is the world of continuous partial attention.

Something interesting pops up on my watch, it’s too long to read on the phone so I pick up my phone to investigate a little further. I see that it’s another report on the latest celebrity news so move on quickly. While I have my phone in my hand, without thinking, I open a social media app, death scroll my way through it. Then switch on to another social media app and do the same. Everyone is a member of at least four social media apps right? I scroll through each one absent-mindedly. Almost automatically I move on to a couple of news apps and get depressed by the world. Finally I take a quit look at the stock market and check who’s up and who’s down, unfortunately for me today is a red day.

This is the world that we live in. This is the world of continuous partial attention.

I am sat on a train trying to write a blog post, this one, I’m making good progress when a chat from a colleague pops onto my screen. While I’m responding to the message I notice the person on the other side of aisle from me. They are a tall athletic looking individual cuddling a tiny white fluff of a dog while, at the same time, running WhatsApp across three different phones. He’s jumping from one to another as we travel, switch-scroll-type-switch. My watch vibrates and it’s a friend asking if I’m available for the usual Wednesday breakfast catch-up. I look back at the blog post and wonder I was up to.

This is the world that we live in. This is the world of continuous partial attention.

You might be reading this and thinking that I’m describing multi-tasking and perhaps you are right, but I like the differentiation of Continuous Partial Attention as something diffeent.

Linda Stone, who first publicized the term, puts it like this:

Continuous partial attention and multi-tasking are two different attention strategies, motivated by different impulses. When we multi-task, we are motivated by a desire to be more productive and more efficient. Each activity has the same priority – we eat lunch AND file papers… At the core of multi-tasking is a desire to be more productive. We multi-task to create more opportunity for ourselves – more time to do more and time to relax more.

In the case of continuous partial attention, we’re motivated by a desire not to miss anything. There’s a kind of vigilance that is not characteristic of multi-tasking. With CPA, we feel most alive when we’re connected, plugged in and in the know. We constantly scan for opportunities – activities or people – in any given moment. With every opportunity we ask, “What can I gain here?”

Time Management Continuous Partial Attention — Not the Same as Multi-Tasking – BusinessWeek (archive.org)

I spend far more time in Continuous Partial Attention than I do multi-tasking. I’m much more likely to be switching to fulfil my desire to be in the know, on the pulse, all caught up, connected. When I sit on my sofa in an evening with multiple screens, usually at least three, I’m not seeking to achieve something on each one, I’m quietly urging each one to be bring me something interesting.

This isn’t good for us. We aren’t built to process all of the inputs that are being fired at us every day. We are meant for a simpler life.

The Wikipedia article on Continuous Partial Attention highlights some of the areas where this behaviour is probably not good for us. I don’t have the attention cycles available to go and check, so I’ll let you link over there and see whether it makes sense. If nly half of what is written there is true we have a lot to be worried about.

Header Image: This is the view along the length of Thirlmere whilst descending Steel Fell after a day of two halves weather wise.

Focus on one thing – it's much better for you

I sit in an open plan office and look around. There are many people sat with headphones on participating in one or other of the constant stream of teleconferences. They’re all sat in front of a screen browsing around, replying to emails, participating in instant message chats. They’re all multitasking. They’re all telling themselves that the call doesn’t require their full attention so they can use some of their attention on some other worthwhile distraction. I’ve done exactly that for many years but the reality is that it’s exhausting, unproductive and ultimately destructive. The call suffers, the worthwhile distraction suffers, we suffer.

RydalI’ve talked about multi-tasking before:

Tony Schwartz recently wrote an article for the Harvard Business Review titled The Magic of Doing One Thing at a Time.

Tell the truth: Do you answer email during conference calls (and sometimes even during calls with one other person)? Do you bring your laptop to meetings and then pretend you’re taking notes while you surf the net? Do you eat lunch at your desk? Do you make calls while you’re driving, and even send the occasional text, even though you know you shouldn’t?

The biggest cost — assuming you don’t crash — is to your productivity. In part, that’s a simple consequence of splitting your attention, so that you’re partially engaged in multiple activities but rarely fully engaged in any one. In part, it’s because when you switch away from a primary task to do something else, you’re increasing the time it takes to finish that task by an average of 25 per cent.

But most insidiously, it’s because if you’re always doing something, you’re relentlessly burning down your available reservoir of energy over the course of every day, so you have less available with every passing hour.

Tony also links to this video from Stanford University which demonstrates what we do to ourselves when we do multitask:

Media Multitaskers Pay Mental Price

(A short break in writing because I was interrupted by an Instant Message from a colleague, which took me through to the start of a call into which I tried to be focussed, for once, without worthwhile distractions. It would be ironic to write a blog post on the dangers of multitasking while multitasking.)

I see myself multitasking all of the time, I’ve certainly not got this one cracked, but one thing I am certain of, I need to spend much more time on one task and far less time flitting between activities. It’s very easy to fill your life with worthless frittering, but that’s draining, unfulfilling and destructive. There are all sorts of pressures to dance from one thing to the next, but the primary challenge is with my own resolve. I suspect I’m like many people, I know that this way of working isn’t good for me, I could do something to resolve it, but choosing to leave things as they are feels like an easier route. In 12 step groups they call this denial and you have to overcome that before you can get too much further.

It’s time to move out of denial, anyone else coming with me?

Multitasking – a Simulation

There’s a popular misconception that multi-tasking is a good thing. FormbyThere’s even one that asserts that women are better at it than men.

Henrik Kniberg has a great simulation to show how multitasking is a not a good idea, it’s called The Multitasking Name Game.

I’m not going to say any more – download the PDF describing how it works, have a read and try it out on your team.

Dilbert on Multi-Tasking

If you think you can multi-task you are kidding yourself and Dilbert has it summed up wonderfully today:

I must state my apologies for every occasion when I have been the pointy-haired boss in a meeting.