Organize Your Mind, Organize Your Life (17 page)

As we get older, shifting again becomes more difficult (something that anyone dealing with aging parents will recognize). This is often blamed on older adults being “stuck in their ways” or intransient and unwilling to change. A group of researchers at the University of California, San Diego recently demonstrated that the decline in one's ability to set shift as we grow older may be due to a degradation of the so-called white-matter tracts that we've mentioned before, those neural “highways” that connect brain regions. The tracts are composed of whitish, insulating tissue called myelin that surround a string of nerve cells. Like the asphalt interstate highways that crisscross America, these routes link the various regions of the brain. Some of the tracts are straight and short, others long and winding. As we get older, the integrity of these roads—like the highways we drive on—can degrade. They get bumpier, there are more potholes and moving information along them becomes a slower, more difficult process. Older adults, whose brains are connected by this aging infrastructure of white-tract matter, must proceed with caution and deliberation—not because they necessarily want to but because they have to.

WHY BOTHER WITH ALL THIS SHIFT AND CONTROL? JUST MULTITASK!

Here's some advice from various online authorities about the wonders of multitasking; this is one about women.

• Any good housewife, mother, housekeeper, cook, secretary or waitress has always known about the benefits of doing several things at once, and she's a whiz at doing it!
  
• In order to be productive, you need to do many things at once—and effectively!
  
• How do you manage to stay sane when you're insanely busy? You become a master of multitasking, of course!
  

Well, there you have it. No need to read any further, is there? The secret is doing three or four or five or six things at once. That's the real key to organization, right?

Wrong.

Back to the automotive analogies and our last few Rules of Order.

Inhibitory control is your driving a straight and true course and applying the brakes when needed to avoid going off the road due to some distraction.

Working memory allows you to recall the road back and that side road you just passed, which may just have the only gas station in the town.

Set shifting is your being able to turn the wheel on a dime and redirect the car when that distraction is worthwhile, significant or valuable. The ability to do all three is a sign of the organized mind. What the organized mind
cannot
do is drive in three different directions at once. Yet some of us are trying to do just that. I'm talking here about that much-used and-abused term
multitasking.
A concept borrowed
from the world of computers, a great deal has been written about this supposed ability to skillfully juggle many tasks at once.

In the 2006 story “The Multitasking Generation,”
Time
identified the teenagers who seem to text, burn CDs and do their homework at the same time as the main perpetrators of this new and questionable approach to life. But the truth is that multitaskers come in all ages and settings. “In most project environments multitasking is a way of life,” wrote management consultant Kevin Fox. “This seemingly harmless activity, often celebrated as a desirable skill, is one of the biggest culprits in late projects, long project durations and low project output.”

Still, many people boast that they are good multitaskers; the implication is that they are somehow performing several tasks at once—talking to you on the phone, writing a report and…who knows?…knitting a sweater and monitoring the evening news all at the same time. While you plug along, trying to do one thing at a time, these people have left you in the dust as they speed along through a hyperefficient life, adroitly handling several tasks simultaneously. Those who see themselves left behind lament at what they perceive as their inability to do this. “I need to learn to be a better multitasker!” is a complaint I sometimes hear from patients.

No they don't. And neither do you.

There are indeed important cognitive skills you can learn in this book; and, as we said in the beginning of this chapter, if you've been reading and applying Coach Meg's prescriptive advice, you are probably starting to utilize better the innate organizational tools and abilities of your brain already. But I'm afraid that multitasking is not one of these. Despite the glowing promise of multitasking enthusiasts, the idea that you can really attend to many things at once is simply a myth of the pseudoorganized. Certainly, it would be nice if we could simultaneously work on four or five tasks. But it's simply not true. Trying to do
a multiplicity of tasks well at the same time usually leads to one end—all of those tasks done inadequately or incompletely. Multitasking is your trying to stretch your ability and to do more than you can. It's the illusion of a lot of balls in the air. In a snapshot, you look like you're juggling six different things, but in the next frame, they all fall to the ground.

A recent study showed that those who identified themselves as heavy media multitaskers processed information differently than infrequent multiple-media users. Were these masters of the media universe better able to process tons of information on various channels? On the contrary. Heavy users did
not
filter out irrelevant stimuli well, they did not ignore extraneous information and they did
not
switch tasks well.

How could they? Do a little experiment for yourself: Take out your cell phone, turn on your television, and boot up your computer. Now try texting a friend, watching a television program and listening to iTunes on your laptop…all at once. Can you do it? Sure. But can you do it in any meaningful way? No. You will inevitably say little, see little, hear little. To those of us who study the brain and its impact on behavior, this is no surprise. We're simply not designed to attend to multiple inputs and perform many tasks at once. On the other hand, we have an innate and marvelous ability to concentrate deeply on one subject but very quickly pull our attention off of that and apply the same level of focus on something else that we have rapidly surmised is of greater immediate importance. So if you focused most of your attention on composing your text to your friend, then shifted to watch the television program and then changed sets again to concentrate on the music, the level and quality of the experience for each would be far, far higher.

That ability is what we call set shifting and that, along with its “partner” process—inhibitory control—is what you need to practice doing more, in order to truly become more productive and efficient.

When it comes to getting things done, as a twelve-year-old boy might colorfully phrase it, set shifting kicks multitasking's butt.

Let's look at a practical example of how and why that is.

MULTITASKING YOU, SET-SHIFTING YOU

Think of yourself for a moment as the typical multitasker at home with the kids on the weekend. You start off doing the laundry and then see some cleaning to do in the cellar. As you sweep behind the dryer, you spot an old toy—a charming wooden riding horse that your aunt gave the kids—lying there. The children are delighted to see it, having long since assumed it was lost forever. A project is undertaken to begin repainting it, while the laundry is left half-folded.

Meanwhile, the morning is drawing late. Now it's time to head to the store to pick up lunch and, in returning home, to begin a project in the garden that you remembered as you were pulling into the driveway—while still partially juggling laundry and the toy-painting project. Now you've got laundry, cleaning, toy painting, gardening and not to mention lunch on your plate. You are feeling confident in your multitasking.

But, not for long. Suddenly, it's 4:00 pm, and a friend calls to remind you that you were supposed to be dropping by for a barbecue—and, oh, hadn't you volunteered to bring the fruit salad? Not to worry, you say confidently, pointing with pride to the fact that you are “multitasking.” You start to list the various projects going on, and as you do you begin to realize that
none
of them have really been completed;
all
have resulted in more work. Most of the laundry has been washed, but none ever made it to the dryer (the discovery of the toy sidetracked you), and now some of it will have to be redone. The cellar is still a mess. That toy is still unpainted. The cold cuts that you left out on the
counter that were supposed to be made into sandwiches have spoiled in the heat. There are now half-dug holes in your garden; the implements of which are lying about and now have to be put back in the garage.

Oh, yes, mighty Master of Multitasking, you've really got a lot of things going on this Saturday! The problem is that they are all unfinished, resulting in more work for yourself and greater disorganization around your house. Oh, and by the way—you arrived late for the barbecue, and by then everyone had eaten and no one was really in the mood for your fruit salad.

We are not aiming to achieve robotlike efficiency or effectiveness every living minute of the day. But on the other hand, a multitasking scenario like this is inevitably discouraging (trust me, I've heard it recounted angrily by many an ersatz “multitasker”)—and understandably so: it's very frustrating to feel that you are rarely achieving what you set out to do, and in the big picture, this can be quite damaging to your goal of being better organized.

To get back to our Rules of Order, it's time to shift from the multi-tasking myth to the science of set shifting and to take another step toward a more organized life. Now, let's take a second look at the scenario we just described.

Instead of you as the typical multitasker at home with the kids on the weekend, let's see how things could go differently if we made you an ace set shifter.

So instead of trying to do a number of things at once, you are now more cognitively nimble, ready to respond to opportunities as they present themselves—thanks to your good set of brakes and your skill in holding and molding information.

We witness the same beginning to the day. The laundry is brought down to the cellar and you spot an old toy lying behind the dryer—a charming wooden riding horse that your aunt gave the kids. The
children have wondered where this is and are interested in reclaiming it. But this time, instead of springing willy-nilly into a reclamation project, you apply the brakes. You imagine the day's schedule on a virtual whiteboard in front of you, and then you set shift. It's 9:00 am. The to-do list for today is reviewed and altered. Besides the laundry, there is general clean-up around the house, food shopping and the barbecue later this afternoon. (Notice that leading up to your success as a multitasker is your ability to stay calm, keep your focus, apply the brakes and run through scenarios in your working memory. Sound familiar?)

You decide to complete only one full load of laundry this morning, and shift for just a few minutes to getting a space in the cellar ready for the kids to clean and paint the toy later this afternoon—after shopping, while you are prepping for the barbecue. This occupies all your attention for a short while. When it's done, you stop again, shift away from this task—without engaging in anything else—and head out to the store. When you return, you hear the weather forecast as you're putting away the groceries. They're calling for rain tomorrow (in the multitasking version of this story, you had the radio on but were too busy thinking about the other things you had left undone to really pay attention). Hearing the forecast, you recall that tomorrow, you were planning to spend some time in the garden. You realize that the garden project is probably better suited for the sunshine of today and the indoor toy painting for tomorrow. So instead of heading down to the basement, you stop,
shift
and devote a couple of hours to the garden.

There is a much more organized feel to this day now, isn't there? Maybe it seems subtle, but the payoff even in this domestic example is significant. Instead of limp, soggy laundry, a messy basement and a garden in disarray, not to mention spoiled luncheon meats and an unmade or unloved fruit salad, you have several tasks done or on their way to completion and others have been rescheduled for tomorrow.
Notice how application of brakes, retaining and molding information and shifting directions are done in a thoughtful way. In so doing, smaller tasks are defined, prioritized and accomplished. Your shifts take place in the face of new contingencies or information (such as the weather forecast). They are not rapid fire and random; they are deliberate and purposive. Here we see also how applying the brakes, molding information and set shifting are tightly related concepts. Notice, as well, the potential influence of some of the other Rules of Order on your ability to shift sets. If after hearing the forecast and realizing you couldn't work in the garden tomorrow, you worried yourself into a tizzy or threw a fit, your ability to recognize and react—to set shift—could, like your half-done laundry, be hampered.

How do we attain the nimbleness of the set shifter? As with the other Rules of Order, for most of us it's an innate skill but one that can be improved.

COACH MEG'S TIPS

My vision is that all of us working on organizing our brains become master set shifters—not just out of the need to respond to the many valid interruptions of our focused attention. No, it's more than that. The master shifter has expanded his field of vision to welcome the new opportunities that life presents us. The shifter's mental flexibility allows him to be nimble and agile, changing the “set”—or situation—fluidly. Instead of reluctantly letting go of the comfortable feeling of his focus on a task, the shifter appreciates the gift of change and what it might bring both to the new situation and to the original task as well.

Dr. Hammerness has described set shifting in terms of cognitive flexibility—which it indeed is. But it's also a skill of cognitive
creativity.
And spontaneity—because set shifting is not always deliberate. It could happen during an interruption.