How to Multitask if You Hate it or Are Not Good at it

It’s often said that multitasking is an essential skill for customer service. Indeed, great service providers seem to have an otherworldly capacity for floating from one customer to another, leaving each one happy with the interaction but no one waiting too long. How do they do it?

No one can actually multitask. Our brains are unitaskers: they can only do one (conscious) thing at a time. When I ask support engineers to supply examples of when they can successfully multitask, some honestly admit they can’t do it at all. But most can think of listening to a podcast and driving, going for a run with their favorite playlist, or cooking while listening to a child or partner talk about their day. In all these examples, one activity is essentially automatic (driving, running, cooking) while the other occupies the brain. And when the automatic activity ceases to be automatic (it’s raining hard, I need to cross a street, or check the recipe), the other activity is suspended or is greatly degraded.

What’s really happening when we “multitask” is that we (our brains!) are quickly switching between two activities.

There is a wide range of natural ability. Over the years, I’ve met quite a few support engineers who are really, really fast switchers. They self-selected into the perfect occupation for them! If you are more of a natural unitasker, switching requires a lot of effort.

It’s tiring to multitask because of the overhead of switching. Think of it as a tax on multitasking, one that’s very heavy for the types of jobs we have in support, and one that’s most burdensome for the natural unitaskers. It’s also harder to multitask at the end of the day, at the end of the week, and as we age (sad but true!).

With that, what can we do to get better at “multitasking”? (We all know that there’s no such thing at multitasking, but it’s a handy shortcut.)

Schedule focus time vs. intake time. Especially if you work on complex issues that require a significant time to get into the details, protect your focus time by not allowing interruptions during deep dives. As a manager, protect support engineers’ focus time by scheduling intake during set hours. It’s possible to do that even with a small team.

Schedule collaboration time. Similarly, encourage collaboration requests to be handled at set times. Of course, emergencies happen. But again, do all you can to protect deep work.

Focus completely on each task. Since our brains are unitaskers, trying to do two things at once is bound to fail, and if one of the tasks is customer-visible the customer will pick up right away on the lack of attention.,

Switch tasks at natural junctions. So you just finished reading the description of a new case and sent the customer a solid request for more information. You could dive into a long exploration of the product functionality–or you could move to the next case. Do the latter, you can always go back to the exploration once you get the customer’s answers.

Timebox. In a way, timeboxing is the opposite of switching at natural junctions since it involves setting a time limit in advance. For instance, I will work on reproducing the problem for one hour. At the end of the hour, I will go get help. Timeboxing ensures that you don’t overlook deadlines and commitments because you got lost in a task. It’s a wonderful tool for unitaskers.

What have you learned about multitasking for yourself and your team? Share in the comments.