How Not to be a Tiger’s Lunch
I see it every day. And I’ve fallen prey to it myself.
I call it DIN syndrome. Do It Now syndrome. It creates quite a din in the human brain. Go ahead, tell me your brain is different. You can multitask effectively because that’s who you are. I call BS. You are deluding yourself.
As technology allows us to do more things at once than we ever could, the myth of multitasking grows too. And there’s neuroscientific research to prove multitasking is as much of a myth as the tooth fairy.
Repeat after me:
I don’t multitask. I switch my focus on many tasks frequently.
When you think you are multitasking, you are not truly multitasking. I’m sure you are smart and wonderful, but your brain isn’t that sophisticated. You are actually switching among tasks at warp speed. It’s something we humans do well. Our brains are good at executive functioning — that is the ability to make plans and decisions to get stuff done.
However, too much simultaneous getting stuff done (aka multitasking) increases cortisol production. Cortisol is a stress hormone. Cortisol is not bad. It helps us get our butts out of bed in the morning. Back in caveman days, it helped us escape being hunted. But too much — the way you’re producing cortisol when you’re deluding yourself that you can multitask all day — results in fatigue and messes with your immune system and blood sugar. And that’s just for starters. It does a bunch of other funky things to your body, but you probably don’t have time to read a science lesson, so take my word for it.
Do you want to be a tiger’s lunch?
Our caveperson ancestors didn’t want to be a tiger’s lunch. They needed to be able to switch tasks and run. But if they had been obsessively checking their iPhones, driving their fancy cars, and slugging down their gluten-free, organic smoothies they might have missed the signal that a tiger was stalking them and they may have made the deadly error of not running away in time. Whether you’re an entrepreneur or a caveman, that would be bad, don’t you think? As entrepreneurs, aren’t we are always dodging “tigers”? I know I am.
All that multitasking day in and day out greatly increases your chances of making errors. Your brain just isn’t hardwired to do make fast switches ALL the time. Increased cortisol, increased miscalculation — is that what you want?
You can cure DIN syndrome. Learn to balance your attempts at multitasking with mindful, purposeful single-tasking. I use an app called Be Focused. It’s basically a fancy timer.
How to help your brain work better
I set the Be Focused app for 30 minute periods and then I focus on only one task during that time. No checking social media. No responding to texts (unless those are the tasks you’ve designated for your time period). At the end of that 30 minutes, I take a 3-minute break during which I move my body. Then I sit down for another 30-minute period. Rinse, lather, repeat. After I’ve done four 30-minute focused periods with no cheating, I give myself a longer break (15–20 minutes) as a reward. It’s not for every brain, but for mine, this works well.
Slow down. Don’t let the tigers find you with your brain not working its best.
