5b. Defrag Techniques

The antidote to multitasking is defragmenting time and focus.  In most situations, freeing up 50% extra capacity is not that hard, if we apply a few simple techniques rigorously.

There are many ways to defragment our time – and brains.  Here is a starting set of them, that we use intuitively when we’re really under pressure, but make a massive difference if used every day – even when we’re not under that much pressure:

1. Task Completion Approach
   Completing each task before moving onto the next one, ensures that we only incur one mental setup per task.
2. Task-Batching Technique
   Batching similar tasks together incurs only one full mental setup per batch – and only very tiny setups per task.
3. Focus Time Scheduling
   Scheduling time to work solidly without (internal) interruptions reduces unnecessary task-switches, if used in conjunction with the following three techniques.
4. Scheduled Interruption Windows
   Scheduling ideal times for (internal) interruptions protects Focus Times and enables us and our interrupters to batch our interruptions.
5. Scheduled Catch-Ups
   Scheduling regular catch-ups with frequent interrupters guarantees them and us priority time, reducing interruptions for both parties and giving each the ability to plan interactions more effectively.
6. Interruption Processing Slots
   Scheduling blocks of time for processing external interruptions that don’t need an immediate response, enables us to take the interruption when it comes in (without breaking our concentration completely) but process it later, allowing us to commit to getting back to the external interruptor at a specific later time.
7. Mental Bookmarking
   Capturing current direction and momentum before switching tasks, preserves momentum and reduces the setup time on our return to the interrupted task.

This and the previous two posts barely scratch the surface of the subject – so explore the implications yourself.  The opportunity for gain is huge!

Check out the Defrag Your Brain Video for a little more detail if you like.

Implementation Steps

1. Schedule Focus Times, Interruption Windows and Interruption Processing Slots into your weekly schedule.
2. Share your schedule with occasional interrupters so that they know when the ideal times to interrupt and not interrupt are.
3. Agree on a Scheduled Catch-ups with frequent interrupters and share the rest of your Defrag Schedule with them, for times when they can’t wait for the next scheduled catch-up.
4. Make sure that everyone understands that they should interrupt you for anything that’s urgent and important – even if you’re on Focus-Time.
5. Plan your day in a way that enables you to batch similar tasks together – and complete important tasks without multiple setups.
6. Resolve to
   1. Complete tasks before switching to something else, where possible.
   2.  Use Mental Bookmarking when you have to switch away from challenging tasks before they’re completed.

We’ll talk about situations in which deliberately breaking a task into parts makes sense, in future posts (e.g. In the series on Deliberate Genius, coming soon).