It's a common misconception that multi-tasking is some sort of "life-hack" that, if only we tried to do more often, we could all be more efficient. From NPR:
"As technology allows people to do more tasks at the same time, the myth that we can multitask has never been stronger. But researchers say it's still a myth — and they have the data to prove it."
"These aren't the droids time slices you are looking for."
However, most of us are probably guilty of thinking we are great multi-taskers when a strict, statistical look at our efficiency might say otherwise. In fact, I used to multi-table up to $1000 buy-in poker (at most 10 tables, depending on buy-in), World of Warcraft (Sold Accounts/Gold via Ebay), Music/TV, and chatting online. Get a much better job than this, it's terrible.
Note: Replicating this experiment may not result in you winning on a phat wrap.
I managed this not by splitting my attention, but rigidly prioritizing my full attention through a practiced order of operations. And, to be clear, this was only possible as I was several hundred-thousand hands deep into my pro career, and strategy decisions required minimal thought and I knew some of the relevant players. Under normal circumstances, against unknowns, I wouldn't recommend almost anyone divide their attention this way at these buy-ins.
Your brain is very much like a sophisticated computer processor. And, not unlike a sophisticated computer processor, it is technically not very capable at doing more than one thing at a time. Have you ever tried to listen to a podcast while working, only to find after a few minutes you have no idea what has been said? Or, perhaps you do recall the content of the podcast, but the work you produced is either incorrect or minimal?
""People can't multitask very well, and when people say they can, they're deluding themselves," said neuroscientist Earl Miller. And, he said, "The brain is very good at deluding itself.""
That doesn't mean you can't learn some efficiency hacks that will improve your productivity, but it does mean you need to find some that are compatible with your "OEM hardware". As luck would have it, the strategy you need to apply to increase your time efficiency is the same one a computer processor does: time slicing.
Humans often to multi-task by doing two things at once. Computers multi-task by slicing up discrete portions of time and assigning them to tasks that cannot be preempted. In other words, if a computer tries to accomplish two tasks over an hour, it will divide the first half hour fully to the first task, and vice versa. This allows maximum "computational horsepower" to be deployed at all times, unlike a human, who will attempt to split efforts 50%/50% and end up with efficiency that may approach something more like 25%/25%/(50% wasted)
To continue the analogy to my odd list of poker and Warcraft, when live in a hand, that table took priority over the active "time-slice" (also known as "now"). If two (three, four, five...) hands were active, then the stakes and looseness of the table determined priority, unless timeout-timers forced the situation. Only when between hands, and neither making decisions nor taking notes, did I have free time-slices to devote to Ebay/WoW. Since MMOs are often slow, waiting games, I could often begin an automated or long task (flight, auto-run) in WoW between poker hands, such that it would be running while my time was devoted elsewhere, and I could return once completed.
If both the poker and WoW tasks were underway or between decision points, I could check Ebay for delivery requests, since Ebay deliveries had to be handled live as they came in, per customer expectations of near-instant service. If those were all clear, I could use the time to research, focus on communicating with friends or music/TV. Once morning hours came, poker tables died down and I could devote that time to moving junk on the WoW auction house, or posting the proceeds on Ebay or one of the other auction sites.
This was temporarily my most exciting screen, as it contained a 1 in 45,121 hand, Ace-King-Ace-King double-suited (best possible in Omaha).
The key is to find tasks that do not require continuous input, but rather, periodic attention over regular or intermittent intervals. It's even better if they are tasks with high payout vs. time invested, but also high proportions of wait time. Imagine a job that paid you $10 a second, but only once per hour. That's an extreme example, and why something like WoW worked well alongside poker. And by well I mean seriously, get that better job I mentioned earlier.
Don't try to do two things at once. You'll fail at both or, if you can keep it together long enough, simply drive yourself nuts via stress. Find the free time-slices in your day, the times you are waiting or wasting time, and try to fill them with activities that can be productively divided into tiny, manageable chunks. The more you practice rapidly swapping your full attention, rather than trying to split it up, the more effective you will be at making rapid decisions accurately. That's the type of skill that, once in awhile, could save your life.
Sources: NPR, Wiki, gigpeak.com
Photograph: Dan Marker-Moore