Why You Should Be Task-Switching More Often

It hinders straightforward productivity, but it enhances creativity.

A few weeks ago, I read an excellent interview in The New York Times Magazine with Georgetown professor of computer science Cal Newport. Many of you may know Newport from books like Deep Work, which elaborate his ideas about doing meaningful work in the face of endless distractions. At one point in the interview, Newport says this: 

“The critical mind-set shift is understanding that even minor context shifts [that is, switching focus from the task at hand to a different task] are productivity poison. That’s the foundational message. We used to multitask, and then research came out and said you can’t literally multitask. Your brain can’t have your inbox open next to the memo you’re writing while you’re also on the phone. So everyone, in the first decade of the 2000s, said: I turned off my notifications. I do one thing at a time. But what we didn’t realize is that even when you jump over to check the inbox and come right back, it can be just as damaging as multitasking. When you looked at that email inbox for 15 seconds, you initiated a cascade of cognitive changes. So if you have to work on something that’s cognitively demanding, the rule has to be zero context shifts during that period. Treat it like a dentist appointment. You can’t check your email when you’re having a cavity filled. You have to see it that way.”

Science backs up Newport here; as David Marchese, Newport's interviewer, added in a side note: "Research has shown that people who work on multiple things concurrently are less able to filter out irrelevancy, have poorer memory and are more easily distracted.”

Yes! True. Except.

Except except EXCEPT:

It turns out that task switching increases creativity. If you want to be creative, you should actually be switching tasks a lot more than you are already. 

That was the conclusion of a set of studies published by Columbia Business School professors Jackson Lu, Modupe Akinola, and Malia Mason in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. They found that forcing people to switch frequently between two different tasks increased their creativity in two ways: 

1. It improved their ability to generate of multiple ideas, heading in diverse directions; and

2. It improved their ability to identify the unique or best solution to the problem.

Why would switching between tasks have this effect? Because temporarily setting a task aside reduces cognitive fixation. Decades of research have found that people tend to get stuck on one particular way of approaching a problem, failing to see that other approaches are possible. Setting the task aside for a time helps break the hold of our fixation, and allows us to return to the task with fresh eyes and a fresh mind.

Of course, you could simply take a break from working on the creative task—go get a snack, fold some laundry. The beauty of the technique proposed by Lu and his coauthors is that it preserves both productivity and creativity. You’re working the whole time, just on two different tasks, and continually bringing fresh creativity to each one.  

Here are two nuances to Lu’s research that I found helpful.

Nuance One: It seems like a good idea to reach a kind of resting place with one task, and then switch to the other. But Lu’s study and others found that this is not the approach that is most conducive of creativity. The point about fixation is that we don’t realize when we’re fixated. So it’s actually better to force ourselves to switch tasks at regular, closely-spaced intervals, rather than leaving it up to our own discretion. 

Set a timer for yourself and work on one task for five minutes; the timer goes off, and now you’ve got five minutes to work on the alternate task; five minutes later, it’s back to the original task. (I know it sounds crazy-making, but try it. It actually feels energizing, in my experience.)

Nuance Two: In the course of their research, Lu and his collaborators also discovered that people don’t readily recognize that task-switching makes them more creative, and therefore don’t choose to do it. We’ve too fully absorbed the message of Cal Newport and others that task-switching is bad, really bad.

As Lu et al. write: “People discount the creative efficacy of continual task switching, such that they overwhelmingly fail to select the condition that yields the best creative performance.” When it comes to creative tasks, they say, we are not switching too often. Rather, we are radically under-switching.

How about you? Have you had experience with task-switching increasing your creativity?