From last time … The more unfinished tasks we have that require our attention in order to be completed, the more cognitive capital we pay to context storage and switching. The question is, how can invest our cognitive capital wisely in a world that demands task switching and advocates technology to support it? …

Better Brain Use During Multitasking 

We’ve all been there: it’s one thing after another; 1 million things that interrupt us and that require our attention, preferably all at the same time 

At the end of the day, your brain feels like gelatinous overcooked oatmeal, utterly useless for doing what you enjoy from your heart and what recreates your cognitive functions and emotional well-being.

The key is to step away and take a long, hard look at the flow of your day and start to manage – within your limitations – obviously, how often you switch between tasks and why.

Taking inventory of the days that leaves you drained means that you engage in metacognitive analysis of how your brain is used by others and how you use your brain. 

To perform the analysis, realize that you encounter your first cognitive limitation: as we exist in the here and now, we operate with short-term memory and working memory (which are two different things/ideas/concepts) but roughly correspond to to our experience of consciously remembering things and accessing and perceiving in the here and now.

Put it another way you can’t remember everything at once, and you cannot perceive everything at once. As a result, you need to gather and download what you remember and what you experience. This is the process that gives you the big picture on a single page, literally. This beats having thoughts and memories distributed all over your brain. Trust me, I am human and a experimental cognitive psychologist 🙂

Big Picture Construction Part 1:

Don’t use a computer. Don’t use a tablet. Don’t use a phone. Don’t use technology.

Take a large piece of paper.

Take a pencil.

Now:

Write each task each engagement on the piece of paper and circle it –  make it look like a bubble in your day.

Get messy!  Let is Bubble up! Lists are overrated

Stop when you get bored and walk away.

Come back within 24 hours. Take a few minutes or take an hour .. start in the morning and finish at night … what ever works for you is right.

Go through the cycle of stopping and writing as often as you need to until you feel you’ve dumped everything on the piece of paper.

Done?

Fantastic, now we can tear things up. 

Really?

Oh yes. Because as we’re tearing into the big picture, we will investigate and simplify our bubbles. For example, we’ll find patterns that may or may not work for us.

We’ll work on that in the next couple of days…. You’ve done enough for one day.

See you tomorrow 🙂