Image source: Royal Examiner
How do we get through our never-ending “to-do” list most effectively?
By Emma Guo, Staff Writer
Have you ever watched a TV show while doing homework? Most likely, it takes you longer to finish than when you’re only focusing on homework itself. This describes the “switching cost”—a deficit in task performance due to the brain needing to readjust when switching between simultaneous tasks. Herein lies the crux of why multitasking isn’t always encouraged.
Despite this, we often find ourselves struggling to conquer deadlines individually while maintaining our mental and physical well-being. A solution seems to be doing multiple tasks at once. Before you know it, you are binge-watching your comfort TV show while writing an essay due the next day…
What if there is a way to “multitask” properly?
This is where the wonder of neuroplasticity, the ability of the brain to adapt throughout life, comes in. Like Play-Doh, the human brain can be kneaded in response to information it receives. This is why we can learn automatic tasks: tasks that have been practiced so much that they no longer require much effort and concentration.
Neuroplasticity is also the answer to improving our “multitasking” capabilities. Through practice, it is possible to alter our focusing capabilities and the connections in our brains to become more efficient. It can begin with something as simple as meditation to train your attention state. By doing so, you become less reliant on task-switching and other addictive tendencies, thereby rewiring your brain to focus on the task(s) at hand.
Thankfully, as university students, the area of the brain involved with multitasking (Brodmann’s Area 10) is in its prime time for use. So take advantage of this sliver of time when your prefrontal cortex can multitask most efficiently, and use it to survive being a U of T student.
Multitasking can be effective if the right boundaries are set in place. Such boundaries exist between tasks with different rigour and importance. Conducting two higher-level tasks simultaneously is more difficult due to the inability to share mental resources between the two tasks. For instance, watching a TV show while writing an essay has a much higher switching cost, because both tasks occupy a lot of your mental resources.
However, if one of the tasks is an automatic task, it becomes more compatible and can make “multitasking” easier. Less mental resources required to complete the tasks mean a smaller switching cost. A more useful example of multitasking is walking on the treadmill while reviewing flashcards. As walking is an automatic task and reviewing flashcards is a higher-level task, they are compatible because the amount of mental resources each task requires complements each other.
Multitasking is one of the best solutions to time management as a university student. By combining automatic tasks with higher-level tasks such as the example above, it is possible to save time. Reflection upon your unique circumstances is important to finding what works best for you—for instance, the gym might be too loud for you to focus. Strategizing which tasks we combine might be the key to maximizing our brain’s capacity to handle our never-ending “to-do” list and declutter our hectic lives.
