In My Mind 17 - You can have it all, just not right now, Multitasking is a myth, All good decisions can be destroyed with one bad decision

You can have it all, just not right now

It's become common to tell children that they can be whatever they want to be. This statement, in and of itself, is false. Desire alone isn't enough in order to achieve big things. Furthermore, there's a limited number of hours in the day and days in the week and if you want to be a great father, a successful businessman, a great friend, and an Olympic athlete the chances are these aren't going to all be 10/10 at the same time. That's not to say that you can't be all these things, but it is very likely that to do them you'll have to target one or two at a time.

For example, the time sacrifice needed to run a successful business or be an Olympic athlete suggests that, even if you were able to do both of these in the same time period, you'd have to sacrifice other things in your life to be able to commit to them fully. This might mean that you have to say no to meeting up with your friends regularly, or put dating to the back of the priorities list for a year.

With this in mind, it shouldn't be a judgement on you as a person if your priorities change over time. At the end of the day the words "I don't have the time" are typically false, and in fact should be replaced by "that's not a priority for me right now", as if something is a priority for you, you'll find the time to do it. In your teenage years socialisation is a key priority for a lot of people. Going to parties, meeting new people, and regular meet ups are very common in this age bracket. But as you get older your priorities might shift towards your career which leaves less time for socialising. As you continue to get older you might realise that based on your current priorities you might not find a partner with whom you can raise a family, so your priorities shift again so you can focus more on dating and finding that partner.

Changing priorities in different stages of your life is important but it's important to be mindful of when those changes happen, and whether it's a conscious change, or if you're being pushed in a direction without much thought.

Multitasking is a myth

How often do you sit at home watching TV while also scrolling social media? How often do you start one thing at work but end up with two or three tasks on the go at once? Do you call this 'multi-tasking'? In truth the human brain can only focus on one thing at a time so if you are trying to do more than one thing your focus isn't shared between them, it is switched - this is called context switching.

Context switching occurs when you're in the middle of one thing and then you move to another quickly. Sometimes this is necessary, but a lot of the time we use context switching due to ill discipline and boundaries. Research shows that it can take up to 23 minutes to refocus on a task after each disruption. So how many times do you context switch in a day? If you switch focus 5 times a day (in the middle of tasks), you could be wasting up to 2 hours of time just getting yourself back in a focused state of work. These distractions could be emails, text messages, phone calls, team members coming to you with questions, or having a scroll on social media.

Imagine you're working on a report and while you're working away you receive an email. The notification itself is a distraction; it will have taken some of your attention. But, if ignored, your focus time is still protected and you can continue. However, if the sound of your email notification influences an action to open, read, and understand the email straight away you've not only reduced yourself to the same level of Pavlov's dogs but you have also triggered a context switch, and with that, potentially 23 minutes of wasted time.

In my own attempts to break this I've put measures in place to reduce how many distractions are possible. These include:

• Turning off push notifications while in "work" mode on my phone.
• Using an app called ScreenZen to block social media apps during the working day.
• Using "Do not disturb" on my work laptop whenever I need focused time.

Each of these things are small and don't take much effort but combined together can have a massive impact on your focus time during the day. ScreenZen was an eye opener for me. It essentially stops you immediately opening apps on your phone. I have it set for social media apps and when you tap them it brings up a holding screen where can you make a decision whether to use one of six "unlocks" for the day (you can change the number of times you want to open the app in a day) and if you do you still have to wait for 5 seconds before the app opens properly. The number of times I have picked up my phone and without much thought ended up at the holding screen is scary. All that screen does is stop you getting into the app immediately, yet by stopping the momentum you're then able to stop, think about whether you actually want to use this time on social media, and then make a conscious decision rather than what was happening previously which was to open my phone, open an app, and then not be aware of the decision I'd made until 10 minutes of 'doomscrolling'.

All good decisions can be destroyed with one bad decision

We make hundreds of decisions each and every day. What clothes to wear, what to have for breakfast, what route to take to work. The list is endless and we often try to optimise every decision to get the best out of them. But in all this optimising we often ignore the big decisions that can ultimately have the biggest impact on us. The biggest decisions in our lives are actually taken for granted and without much thought.

As an example, if you're planning a holiday you will optimise for the best hotel with the nicest views and facilities, you'll optimise for the best time of year to get the best weather, and choose the best location because you want to go bike riding with the family so somewhere with great routes is important. After all this optimisation you decide where you want to go so head over to the travel agents (I know most people book holidays online now, but bear with me). You drive to the travel agents but because it's just around the corner you don't put your seatbelt on. This is a common occurrence and you've not had an accident yet so there's no evidence to suggest it's a problem for you. You book the holiday and while away you go bike riding just as planned. You find the perfect route, a mixture of road and off road cycling. You head out on your bike but don't bother to wear a helmet, after all you've been riding a bike since you were young, you don't fall off anymore.

Deciding to not wear a seatbelt or a helmet in these situations is known as a Downside Asymmetric Risk Event. Essentially, you're making a decision where the potential negative outcome far outweighs the potential positive outcome. What's the positive outcome(s) of not wearing a helmet? You don't sweat as much and you don't flatten your hair are the only two I can really think of. What about the potential negative outcomes? Well, if you get knocked off your bike by a car you could quite easily fracture your skull, you could get brain damage, or worse. When the outcomes are delivered in front of you like this, it is completely illogical to not wear a bike helmet. We could do the same exercise for wearing a seatbelt, or crossing a busy road in the dark, with dark clothes and noise cancelling headphones on. I've heard these decisions talked about in terms of multipliers. Effectively every time you make a decision your life (subjectively) gets closer to or further away from your goals. Spending time journalling may be a 1.1x change, eating three takeaways a week may be a 0.7x change. Each decision moves the "life score" up and down. These decisions that have massive downside have a 0x effect. Any time you choose to make these decisions you eradicate all the other positive decisions you've made in the past (any number multiplied by 0 results in 0).