For this assignment, I decided to track my mindless multitasking behavior. More often than not, multitasking simply slows me down because I have to spend time getting back to what I was doing whenever I do context switching. I am the kind of person that needs to be very focused when doing work, especially the type of work that requires a lot of mental energy such as coding. I have been trying to use the Pomodoro technique, which requires you to work undistracted for 25 minutes, after which you can take a 5-minute break doing whatever you want. I have found the technique to be useful, but I also still find myself multitasking a lot, which means that I’m not really do deep work during the 25 minutes.
On Saturday and Sunday, I specifically paid attention to whenever I got distracted and tried to multitask during the periods I had the Pomodoro timer on. I then wrote down the time, the main task I was trying to focus on, and why I started multitasking. I had an unusual number of social events happening this weekend, however, so the number of hours I was able to track the behavior was lower than usual. It was nonetheless useful, though, and I still got to note down all the times that I multitasked as well as what led me to multitasking. Two main reasons I ended up multitasking were 1) I had an internal thought about something and 2) I got an external signal such as a slack notification. The things I ended up doing as I multitasked were all not urgent, yet the urge to do them once they came to my mind was often strong enough that I acted on it. And once I got distracted from my main task, I had to spend extra time recovering to the state before I started multitasking, so I ended up having to spend more time on all tasks than if I had finished my main task to a stopping point before switching to another task. The connection circle model is particularly well-suited for this system because of the circular nature of it. The fishbone diagram, on the other hand, was also helpful to draw because it prompted me to think more about the different reasons that can lead to unintended multitasking.
If I were to do the “measuring me” project again for this same behavior, I would pick a period of at least 3 days that is representative of how my days usually go. This way I would be able to gain more accurate insight into my behavior, such as how frequently I multitask, and who and what often distracts me from my main task.
