Why Managers Who Multitask Risk Lower Team Performance

Here is the verbatim transcript of the podcast episode:
In this episode of *The High Performance Leader*, host Jimmy Burroughes explores the hidden costs of multitasking in the modern workplace. He breaks down the three types of multitasking, the psychological personas prone to it, and how cognitive switching drains energy and lowers overall productivity. Burroughes advocates for replacing multitasking with "monotasking" through techniques like deep work and task batching to elevate leadership impact without burnout.

"We need to learn how to focus our energy and our efforts on one thing at a time and do really deep work on those meaningful tasks that are going to make the biggest difference if we want to be really impactful."

"Each time we multitask, we reduce our productivity by between 40 and 80% versus had we just carried on doing one thing."

"If multitasking were truly effective, wouldn't the most successful, impactful, most high-performing leaders be those who could juggle the most tasks? And we know from evidence... that's not what they're doing."

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Introduction: The Multitasking Illusion

[00:00]

JIMMY: We need to learn how to focus our energy and our efforts on one thing at a time, and do really deep work on those meaningful tasks that are going to make the biggest difference if we want to be really impactful.

Welcome back to this week's episode of The High Performance Leader, the podcast for leaders working in complex, challenging environments to gain insights and ideas which help you increase your impact without burning out, and to help you build a high-performance culture in your team. I'm your host, Jimmy Burroughes, and if you're new to The High Performance Leader, make sure you subscribe or follow so you don't miss any of our upcoming episodes before you put down your device.
[00:45]

JIMMY: Hello and welcome back to this week's episode of The High Performance Leader. Now, if you're one of the 30% of our listeners who isn't subscribed or following The High Performance Leader podcast, please make sure you tap or follow that button on whichever device you're listening, on whichever platform you're using, so we make sure that you don't miss any of the episodes with our fantastic guests or the interesting topics that we cover.

This week, we're going to be talking about a topic that I'm so interested in, I actually wrote a book about it. And the topic is multitasking. And if you stick around until the end of the episode, there'll be a very special offer for all listeners of the podcast, which I encourage you to take advantage of. It's free and you want to make sure that you you get hold of that offer before you dial off.
[01:30]

JIMMY: So let's talk about, first of all, one simple question: do you feel busier than you've ever felt before, but for some reason, you're not feeling as productive? Or do you feel like you've got more plates in the air, or balls in the air, and you're spinning everything, and you're running around between meetings, and everything just seems to be more hectic than it ever has been, but you don't feel like you're delivering as well as you have previously?

If that's you, this episode is 100% for you, and I encourage you to grab a pen and paper and take some notes as we go through, or at least open up the notes app on your phone so you can scribble some stuff down as we go, because there's some interesting facts and figures in here that you're going to want to keep in your mind.

Three Types of Multitasking

[02:12]

JIMMY: What I do want to do is set the premise that I don't think multitasking is a particularly helpful tactic or technique in the modern workplace. And you may agree or disagree; I'm going to take the position of disagreeing, and I'll tell you a little bit why I think that is, and hopefully I'll be able to convince you that multitasking is not serving you as well as you think it might be.

So let's, first of all, just cast our minds back to a time recently where you were multitasking. So that could have been maybe talking on the phone while driving, or it might have been answering emails during a webinar. The key here is, were you doing more than one thing at a time? If you were, that's multitasking. And for many of us—I'm a new dad, and one of the things I've noticed is I'm trying to juggle so many things at the same time that I suddenly realized actually it's having an impact on my ability to deliver any of them to the highest possible standard.
[03:13]

JIMMY: Now, the research that we have been working with has identified actually three different types of multitasking. And I'd like for you to identify which of these do you do and which of them are having an impact on your productivity.

So the first one, as I mentioned, is doing two or more tasks simultaneously. So are you trying to watch TV, answer some emails, have a conversation with your kids or your partner, and keep an eye on the oven because dinner's cooking? Are you in a meeting texting somebody else in your team, thinking about a one-on-one catch-up you've got to have, and trying to also scribble some notes down that are relevant to the meeting so you can ask some good questions? Both of those are the first type of polychronic activities that are probably the most frequent.
[03:59]

JIMMY: The next type is when we talk about shifting from one task to another without completing the first task. So that could be maybe you start a project, and then you start another project, and then you start another project, and none of them are finished, so you don't engage in end-to-end. And again, this can be very common, especially in the modern workplace, because you are involved in so many different things at the same time.

The third type of activity we talk about when we term multitasking is performing two or more tasks in rapid succession. So an example of this is if I asked you to count from 26 down to one, and then I also asked you to go from Z to A—so 26, Z; 25, Y—and continue that on, that's when we're performing two tasks in rapid succession.
[04:53]

JIMMY: Now, that can be extremely challenging for our brains as well, and we'll talk about what some of those impacts are. But are you doing any of those? Are you doing two or more tasks simultaneously? Are you switching between tasks very frequently? Or are you performing two or more tasks in rapid succession? Just take a moment to think about that, and if you are, then you are a multitasker.

Four Reasons Why People Multitask

[05:14]

JIMMY: And it seems interesting to me that multitasking seems to be something that we encourage in the workplace. It's seen as a strength. It's seen as an advantage, because, after all, people who multitask get more stuff done, don't they? Well, unfortunately, no.

But because of the complexity of the jobs that many of us have now as senior managers or leaders, it often is something that we have to rely on in order to keep things moving forward, or to feel like we're moving things forward, because actually, we choose to do multitasking. We choose to structure our days full of itsy-bitsy little meetings and project sessions versus the alternative, which is deep work and focused work, and we'll talk more about that later on.
But I absolutely feel for you if you're somebody who feels like your environment demands you to multitask. If the way your job is structured demands that you multitask or you feel like it does, because there's where the opportunity for improvement lies, is changing the way you feel about it so you start to approach it a little bit differently.
[06:15]

JIMMY: So why do we multitask? It isn't just the environment; we make a conscious choice to choose to multitask. And some fascinating research from the University of Utah actually identified four different types of reasons why people multitask. So again, note down and listen for yourselves: which one of these are you, or you may be more than one, but normally we are one of these particular characters that we have identified, or the University of Utah has identified.

So the first one is the approach-oriented or reward-focused individual. So this is the person who's highly motivated and really likes to get stuck into things and wants to see the benefits of their work as an outcome. So perhaps that's you.
[07:05]

JIMMY: The next one is our high sensation seeker. If you're in the world of DISC, this could be your resource investigator. If you're an HBDI person, these are the yellow people who like to explore and innovate and try new things, because they get a bit of a kick, they get that dopamine hit from the excitement of starting something new versus the boringness of finishing off the old thing. Certainly, this one is me.

The next one is those who actually believe they are good at multitasking. And I can tell you that there are 2% of the population out there who, cognitively, are very capable multitaskers. There are 98% of us who aren't. Unfortunately, those 98%, nearly all of them believe they are the 2%. It's a bit like drivers: everybody thinks they're better than average, but statistically, half of us have at least got to be worse than average.
[07:54]

JIMMY: So there are 2% of us who can multitask. Interestingly, in those 2%, very few of them actually do multitask because they see the disadvantages of it. So you're probably not in that 2% if you're listening and you're struggling at work right now, so stop believing that you are.

And then the final one is those people who really struggle to focus or are prone to distraction. Are you the little butterfly who's all over the place all the time? Are you constantly changing tasks and changing your mind and moving around and thinking, "Well, if I just get on with this one, I can make some progress here, then I'll do this one. Oh, and this has just got distracting for me"? If you're that, then, again, chances are you're multitasking for a number of reasons.
But which one of those four personas or characters is your primary reason for multitasking?
[08:44]

JIMMY: What we've seen from the research of the book that we wrote and also dealing with leaders, coaching and mentoring them for the last five or six years, is that there is this genuine belief that I have to multitask to get my job done efficiently. And what we've seen from the subsequent research is, when we show them the new way, their productivity improves, their impact increases, and they end up actually being seen as far more effective leaders than they were previously, even though they previously thought they were doing a great job and getting frustrated that they weren't getting the results and the reward and the recognition that they wanted.

So this is really interesting research, and I definitely recommend digging into the book, but it's very much a belief system that drives the behavior.

The Neurological and Economic Cost of Multitasking

[09:25]

JIMMY: So how does multitasking actually work in your brain, then? Well, there's Meyer and some other scientists came up with some great research which talked to, essentially, about the executive control processes in your brain. And when we multitask, it's kind of like having one of those old-fashioned tape decks. Do you remember those, the cassette players? And you had a tape that was playing, and then you press stop and eject, put the other tape back in, push the door closed, and press play.

And that's what, essentially, we're having to do in our brains when we multitask. And you can see that taking a tape out, replacing it with another one, pressing play takes a little bit of time and thought, right? Well, the same thing happens when we multitask.
[10:04]

JIMMY: We have to go through these executive control processes. First of all, of goal shifting: so I'm doing task A; now I want to stop doing that and I want to start doing task B. So in my example earlier, maybe I am counting from 26 to one and using the letters Z to A. Well, I've got to stop doing that and start doing this, and so the first piece is goal shifting.

The second executive control process is what we call rule activation. And this is, okay, so now I'm doing task A, I need to put the rules for that aside, and I need to remember the rules for task B and apply those rules. And then when maybe I move on to task C, I've got to stop doing the rules for task B and start doing the rules for task C.
[10:52]

JIMMY: Now, this might only take maybe a tenth of a second. Maybe if we're talking about a super simple example like 26 to one and Z to A, very easy because they're heuristically embedded in us as something that we can remember reasonably easily. But if we're switching between two cognitively demanding tasks, maybe between two projects, maybe I've got to go back and read all the previous research or remember the conversations that were had, so that what might have been a tenth of a second in a very simple task expands out.

Not to mention one of the other areas that we see a challenge to multitasking is what we call cognitive lag and drain. So not only are we taking some time to switch between the tasks, but there's a little bit of runway, speed up to get ready to do task B or subsequently task C. And it uses a little bit more energy in our brain to do more than one thing at once, because that taking the cassette out, switching it over, putting the new one in, closing the door, that uses a bit more energy than just letting the tape play.
[11:54]

JIMMY: So we use a little bit more sugar up in our brains as the blood goes through our minds. We put a little bit more stress on the cerebellum, the prefrontal cortex, which is where a lot of our executive functioning happens, so we get a bit tired quicker.

And over a period of 24 hours, what we can see, actually, is each time we multitask, we reduce our productivity by between 40 and 80% versus had we just carried on doing one thing. So it's quite a significant amount of impact.
Equally, one of the things that tends to happen is that we could make a mistake. We could have an error. So again, let's go back to our simple example: 26 to one, Z to A. If you're counting backwards through the alphabet, how many of you can do it without making a mistake? Chances are you're going to make an error at some point. Those small errors stack up to an estimated $450 billion globally on an annual basis. $450 billion. So we're talking a significant impact of just those little mistakes that we make while multitasking really start to add up.
[13:04]

JIMMY: And the reality is this: if multitasking were truly effective, wouldn't the most successful, impactful, most high-performing leaders be those who could juggle the most tasks? And we know from evidence, we know from looking at case studies of the highest performing leaders, that's not what they're doing.

So why are you doing that? Why are you believing that multitasking is the best way when all of the evidence points to something different?

The Power of Monotasking: Deep Work and Task Batching

[13:38]

JIMMY: So let's think about what that different thing is. And you've probably already surmised, because you're thinking ahead, that if it's not multitasking, maybe it's a concept called monotasking.

You may have heard the cliché, "Chase two rabbits, catch no rabbits," or my business mentor uses the phrase, "If you try and build seven bridges at once, you're very unlikely to cross the river."
The reality is, we need to learn how to focus our energy and our efforts on one thing at a time and do really deep work on those meaningful tasks that are going to make the biggest difference if we want to be really impactful. So spreading your time and energy across lots of tasks can have a detrimental effect on you and your brain, but it also starts to have an impact on those around you, because you're seen as maybe inconsistent, or scatterbrained, or all over the place, or seemingly like you're changing your mind all the time.
If we can indulge in monotasking, we start to boost our personal impact, but also our leadership effectiveness.
[14:44]

JIMMY: A couple of small examples of what that might look like: first of all could be something we call deep work. This is the hypothetical example perhaps is you've got something you really need to get done today, so you take yourself away from the office, or away—you book yourself a meeting room, or you work from home that day, and you just focus on that one thing.

And I'm sure you've probably done this in the past, and you make enormous progress. That thing you had to do that you've been kind of trying to drop in between meetings and other catch-ups, all of a sudden you are able to deliver significantly more, and you get more progress. And because you're focused on it, you get into what we call flow, which is where time just seems to pass without you knowing about it, but at the end of it, you're like, "Wow, how did that happen?"
And that deep work is one core skill of high-performance leaders. They're able to block out everything else, turn off their emails, turn off the alerts on their phones, remove themselves from any distractions, and get it done.
[15:49]

JIMMY: The second example that I can recommend to you is what we call task batching. So this is aimed at reducing the polychronic lag and drain that we mentioned earlier. So the cost of changing the cassette tapes.

So task batching is where we take similar things and we do them together. So this could be maybe your one-on-ones with members of your team; maybe you try and do them all over the course of a day. Or it could be your social media updates, or because you're planning and sequencing all of your social media posts over a period of time. Or it might be that you do all of your house cleaning in one go. Whatever that similar tasks or similar functions that you can do, if you can put them all together, the cost of changing the cassette tape is minimized because you're doing something similar. You're moving from the one to the next to the next. Now, you wouldn't have two one-on-ones at the same time, so keep them focused on one person. But you are doing them one after the other, so you're in the pattern of one-on-one catch-ups.

Free Resources and Conclusion

[16:47]

JIMMY: If you're interested in finding out a whole lot more about this monotasking, then I highly recommend you go to my website, jimmyburroughes.com. At the top of the page, you'll see a little yellow banner where you can download *Escape the Multitasking Trap*. This is a short, easy-to-read ebook that we've created which talks through an example of a CEO that I worked with over the last few years who went from being the ultimate multitasker to the example monotasker, and the benefits for him, his business, and his team that he noted. And we show you exactly what he was doing, why he was doing it, how he was doing it, and then how he changed, and how you can change, too.

It's full of practical examples, some really easy-to-use resources. And if you grab it now, what I will also offer to you is access to a free training about being a high-performance, high-impact leader, which you will be able to dial into and get the benefit of that for absolutely free. And we know from the workshops that we do, we score really highly on interactivity and usefulness from all of the sessions that we have, so please do make sure you take advantage of that offer. We'd love to see you in the workshop.
[18:03]

JIMMY: So are you a multitasker? Do you still see the benefits in multitasking? If so, perhaps we can encourage you by listening to this podcast again, taking a little bit of time to reflect on what you're doing, and encouraging you to get the book.

If you've seen the light already and you've realized that multitasking is not serving you—and I can assure you it isn't—then perhaps it's time to start adopting some new habits, and we've talked about a few of those today. There's a whole lot more detail in the book.
If you want nothing else, all of that spinning plates and juggling balls is going to tire you out at some point, and we don't want you to burn out. So perhaps if you want to reduce your stress levels, if you want to dial it down a notch, if you want to start to enjoy work a little bit more, listen to some of these tips that we're talking about and put them into practice in your workplace. Why are you multitasking? What type of multitasker are you? And how can you benefit from becoming a monotasker?
[19:02]

JIMMY: I really challenge you to re-evaluate those habits, and please let me know. Drop me a note: [email protected], or reach me on LinkedIn, and tell me what you're going to change specifically. What's that one small thing you're going to stop doing that is multitasking that you think might help? And we'll share them on LinkedIn, we'll share them on social media so others can benefit from your wisdom.

I hope that helps. I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did. And if you haven't already, please do remember to subscribe or follow so you don't miss any future episodes. Speak to you soon.
That's it for this week's episode of The High Performance Leader. If you enjoyed this episode, please drop a review on whichever platform you listened on. We really appreciate it, and it helps us to connect with new listeners.
Also, if you haven't already, head to jimmyburroughes.com and download a copy of my latest bestseller, *Beat Burnout, Ignite Performance*. It's the leader's playbook for building a high-performance culture, and is packed with practical action tips to get you started. Stay tuned for next week's episode of game-changing insights and ideas on The High Performance Leader.