Slow Motion Multitasking — The Hack For Getting More Done While Exploring All Your Interests & Passions & Why It's Important
The trick to getting more done while exploring your inclinations, like the world's most creative & productive people in history
We multitask in everyday life, you come back from work & do your chores while listening to music. You text or talk on the phone while driving. You watch the weekend game or a movie while sending some emails or eating. Multitasking is a given for mundane activities in the modern age. But when it comes to productivity, projects or work at the office or professionally, we often seem to labour at it & struggle.
Focussing on just the task at hand might seem like the best way to go about doing your work & getting the best results, but working on 3-4 tasks or projects over the span of a month can help us significantly, even if we don’t finish some of them on time. Despite seeming strange, and counterintuitive that’s exactly what we must aim to do, according to Tim Harford.
“I'd like to argue that for an important kind of activity, doing two things at once - or three or even four - is exactly what we should be aiming for. Look no further than Albert Einstein. In 1905, he published four remarkable scientific papers. One of them was on Brownian motion, it provided empirical evidence that atoms exist, and it laid out the basic mathematics behind most of financial economics. Another one was on the theory of special relativity. Another one was on the photoelectric effect, that's why solar panels work, it's a nice one. Gave him the Nobel Prize for that one. And the fourth introduced an equation you might have heard of: E equals mc squared. So, tell me again how you shouldn't do several things at once.”
“Now, obviously, working simultaneously on Brownian motion, special relativity and the photoelectric effect - it's not exactly the same kind of multitasking as Snapchatting while you're watching "Westworld." Very different. And Einstein, yeah, well, Einstein's — he's Einstein, he's one of a kind, he's unique. But the pattern of behavior that Einstein was demonstrating, that's not unique at all. It's very common among highly creative people, both artists and scientists, and I'd like to give it a name: slow-motion multitasking.”
Numerous scientific studies suggest that multitasking makes us less productive & leads to errors.
But…
Are we looking at multitasking the wrong way?
Switching between tasks and subjects over a short period of time can be detrimental & counterproductive. But easing them out over a gradual span of time can do wonders for our productivity, help in exploring our interests & inclinations, keep our minds fresh, agile, engaged & occupied & eventually, help in getting more done.
I’ve always had this in me. I’m a very creative person by nature & I’ve undertaken multiple projects at the same time over the course of each year. Although, it was rather haphazard and without a set stringent routine.
In 2022, I wrote & released my debut poetry book ‘The Indian Night’, I put out 5 EPs as a music producer, launched & managed a football blog/content platform, wrote over 40+ blog posts, composed music for over 20+ short films, and began learning to code & successfully developed a few beta software, practised guitar and piano for 30 mins almost every day, apart from releasing covers & a few video essays.
In 2023, I released 5 LPs as a producer, launched my artist YouTube channel posting 6 DJ sets/mixes that I recorded on my travels, started learning the trumpet, wrote another poetry book titled “Interludes To The Indian Buddha”, worked 2 jobs as a film critic and football news writer contributing 45+ articles on film and 200+ articles on breaking football news.
This hyper-productivity might seem daunting, but that’s the trick — to keep things fresh & interesting and aligned with your interests & passions & to chip away gradually.
“Slow-motion multitasking feels like a counterintuitive idea. What I'm describing here is having multiple projects on the go at the same time, and you move backwards and forwards between topics as the mood takes you, or as the situation demands. But the reason it seems counterintuitive is because we're used to lapsing into multitasking out of desperation. We're in a hurry, we want to do everything at once. If we were willing to slow multitasking down, we might find that it works quite brilliantly.”
“Sixty years ago, a young psychologist by the name of Bernice Eiduson began a long research project into the personalities and the working habits of 40 leading scientists. Einstein was already dead, but four of her subjects won Nobel prizes, including Linus Pauling and Richard Feynman. The research went on for decades, in fact, it continued even after professor Eiduson herself had died. And one of the questions that it answered was, ‘How is it that some scientists are able to go on producing important work right through their lives?’ What is it about these people?”
“Is it their personality, is it their skill set, their daily routines, what? Well, a pattern that emerged was clear, and I think to some people surprising. The top scientists kept changing the subject. They would shift topics repeatedly during their first 100 published research papers. Do you want to guess how often? Three times? Five times? No. On average, the most enduringly creative scientists switched topics 43 times in their first 100 research papers. Seems that the secret to creativity is multitasking in slow motion. Eiduson's research suggests we need to reclaim multitasking and remind ourselves how powerful it can be. And she's not the only person to have found this.”
Different researchers, using different methods to study different highly creative people have found that very often they have multiple projects in progress at the same time, and they're also far more likely than most of us to have serious hobbies. Slow-motion multitasking among creative people is ubiquitous,” says Tim Harford.
If you’re rowing a boat, you can’t only row on one side the whole time, you have to switch sides or you’ll eventually get fatigued and tired. It’s the same concept with your projects. You’ve got to alternate from one to the other. Shifting from one project to the other helps in getting the rowboat going smoothly & the more rowers the better!
Why Our Interests Are Important — According To The Data
Exploring your interests & finding your passions & pursuing them are a key ingredient to your life’s journey, and in turn, how much you achieve in each aspect or pursuit in your life.
The following graph below, taken from a paper by researchers James Round & Rong Su from the University of Illinois titled ‘The Nature & Power Of Interests’, reveals some key data-driven insights.
As per the graph, your income success depends 83.3% on your interests. That is quite staggering, and so finding a job (or jobs) centred around your interests determines how much money you will make. It’s a key component of the ‘why?’ you do your work & how much your drive to is earn your income.
In terms of occupational prestige, your ability contributes significantly more at 58.9% but your interests still account for 32.9% of success in the workplace. However, college or academic success is largely attributed to your intelligence & personality.
But running a simple average covering all the spheres measured above 39.98% of the success you’ll see in your life stems from your interests. That’s nearly 50% meaning that, exploring your interests is almost half of all the ingredients required for success in your achievements in life.
Find Your Interests & Take Up Simultaneous Projects
It’s rather important to align your life’s work with your passions and interests. A way to figure that out is to find out what you’re inherently drawn towards. Asking yourself the question, ‘What do I really want to do?’ helps significantly.
Once you’ve narrowed down on your passions, begin learning them & develop knowledge, skills & expertise in them. Think of it this way, become such an expert on your passion(s) that people will seek you out for it. While that might be difficult and could take time, it’s worth it. After all, it’s what you’ll love doing.
Furthermore, build credibility in the fields of your passion(s). Read, learn, research, write/blog, and create tangible forms of your ideas, that others can view, learn & understand from & review. The process of slow-motion multitasking is perhaps paramount. So don’t be afraid to take up several projects at the same time, work on them simultaneously while mixing it up from time to time.
It’s also important to have hobbies, and if a hobby can become a source of income or an area of developing expertise, then it’s great too.
It’s so much better to explore all your interests than be confined to the banality or a box of just what your occupation entails. Keep learning & keep trying new things, and work on projects using slow-motion multitasking; you’ll get a lot done by the end of each year.
In his TED talk, author Tim Harford makes an intriguing & compelling case for the importance of slow-motion multitasking with cheeky yet inspiring references and little anecdotes and stories from the most creative and innovative minds throughout history.
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