Leaders' Playground

10: Escaping the time trap: How to turn time confetti into time serenity

• Irene Salter, PhD • Season 1 • Episode 10

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Tick-tock goes the clock, echoing the relentlessly busy pace of life. From my early days as a teacher to life as a principal juggling a young family, my obsession with time management and productivity twisted my days into a chaotic, multitasking, exhausting whirlwind.

In this episode, we explore the concept of "Time Confetti," a term coined by Brigid Schulte, representing the way time in our modern lives gets chopped up into tiny scraps like confetti. Through a series of experiments (try it with me!) and surprising studies (featuring a unicycling clown?!?) we'll explore the science of task switching and multitasking, revealing how they drain energy, increase errors, and reduce productivity.

We'll end with practical tips for reclaiming your time, from focused time blocking to batching small tasks. Transform your scattered days into a balanced flow, achieving what time researchers call "Time Serenity."

Resources:

For complete show notes, transcript, and free downloadable resources go to: https://www.irenesalter.com/podcast

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Leaders Playground. Today, it's all about time management. You might think multitasking is the best way to manage your time. Nuh-uh, that's a myth. If you think you're multitasking, what you're really doing is task switching, and there's a ton of psychological research that shows task switching results in more errors, slower responses and decreased productivity. I'm going to teach you not one, but three strategies for better time management. Here we go. Hi, thank you for listening to the Leader's Playground, the podcast for leaders who wish their work could feel more like play. Leadership can be lonely, overwhelming and just plain crazy-making. We are here to rekindle the spark. I'm Irene Salter, your host, and a PhD neuroscientist and science educator with a passion for helping people thrive, not just survive. Please click that follow button so you don't miss a single episode.

Speaker 1:

Time has always been a touchy thing with me. First year as a teacher, I realized it was really unhealthy for me to wear a watch. I was constantly checking the thing. Sometimes time would drag on and on and on. Sometimes it would just fly by. I got addicted to checking what the time says. Was I on time? Did I have enough time? How much time did I have? When do I start? When do I stop? Am I late? Is it overdue? I always was worried and anxious. I finally abandoned my watch altogether and I simply relied on the wall clock. That totally took my anxiety down, but it did not solve all of my problems. Took my anxiety down, but it did not solve all of my problems.

Speaker 1:

My typical day later on, when I became a school principal, all of that anxiety kept roaring back. I had a one-year-old and a six-year-old at home. I became obsessed with time management. Productivity was the rule of my life. I tried to constantly figure out what could I do to take better advantage of the time that I had and try to figure out how could I possibly find time for it all. My problem was that life was constantly full of interruptions and that weight of responsibility over my kids, all the other students at school, the staff, the teachers, my family. It felt like it was just too much. This kid was disrupting class. That kid got injured on the playground. I needed to call that mom. I needed to call this teacher.

Speaker 1:

Teachers came in all the time with a do you have a minute? And as soon as I could check one thing off my list, five new ones crowded into that tiny little space off my list, five new ones crowded into that tiny little space. Any vacant brain space I had at work was occupied by worries about home. What was on my grocery list? What were the undone chores? Child care worries, piles of laundry, feeling like my kitchen was just a bomb. And then, finally, when I could come home at the end of a really busy day, any vacant brain space at home was occupied by worries about all of the kids at school, the teachers, the piles of reports left undone on my desk, the hundreds and thousands of emails piling up in my inbox. It was exhausting. I would collapse at the end of the day, and yet my brain wouldn't slow down. It was still full of all of this churn. How could I possibly find time for it all?

Speaker 1:

What I discovered was I was living a life of time combetti. That term was coined by Bridget Schulte, author of Overwhelmed. How to Work, love and Play when no One has the Time Brilliant book. It described time confetti as trying to do quote everything all at once all the time. One day Bridget Schulte was cleaning up after her son's 11th birthday party. The room was scattered with confetti from these like bright little poppers that the kids had played with that shot, colored pits and scraps of paper all over the place, and she thought that's what my life feels like. That's what my life feels like Bits and scraps of time, rushing from one thing to the next. Why is it? Why is it that, first of all, our time gets carved up into time confetti and secondly, what's going on in our brain when time is shredded in that way?

Speaker 1:

To understand that second question, I'm going to invite you to do an experiment with me. That experiment is going to require some brain space. So if you are listening while driving, gardening or cutting vegetables, anything where you might like nick or injure yourself, I'd love for you to take a pause on whatever that other activity is, and I want you to just find five minutes to try the experiment with me. If you really are too busy, totally fine, listen in. I'm sure you'll understand it just by listening to the experiment itself.

Speaker 1:

What we're going to do is we're going to do some simple math. I'm going to give you a number and your job is to add three to that number. So if I give you five, you'll add three, you'll get eight, and just say the number out loud when you have calculated it. Are you ready? I'm going to give you seven numbers and each time I give you a number, if you could please just add three and shout out the answer. You ready? Eight, 11, 15, 6, 5, 17, 13. Very good, how did you do? Not too hard, I hope. Next, I want you to subtract three from every number that I say. So if I shout out a number, just subtract three. Ready, 12, 5, 10, 5, 20, 17, 11. Excellent, all right. The next thing I'd like you to do is to alternate. I would like you to switch between adding three to the first number. I say then subtracting three from the next number, then adding three from the first number. I say then subtracting three from the next number, then adding three from the next number, and just in that pattern back and forth. So 7, 20.

Speaker 1:

If you're like me or anyone else, you probably found that that last task alternating between adding 3 and subtracting 3, last task, alternating between adding three and subtracting three was way harder than either just straight adding or just straight subtracting. Why is it? Why is it harder for our brains to alternate? What the research finds is that task switching takes longer up to twice as long for our brains to do it. There are more errors and it's exhausting. Do you remember a couple episodes ago where I talk about decision fatigue? Task switching is one of those things that causes that energy drain and, in terms of our productivity, task switching can cost as much as 40 percent of someone's productive time. Every time you switch tasks, you become less productive. So the takeaway point of this is that our brains do well focused on a single task, but when we have to switch between tasks, even when they're so related as adding and subtracting, it takes longer, you make more errors and it's more exhausting.

Speaker 1:

Now let's try a slightly different thing. I want you to try some multitasking. So here's what you're going to do In your head you're going to recite the alphabet A, b, c, d, e, f, g. As you're doing so, I'm going to shout out a number and I'd like for you to add three to that number while at the same time, as best as you can, continue reciting the alphabet. So it'd be A, b, c, d. I'll say five, you'll add three to make eight, e, f, g, eight, h, I, j, k, et cetera. Got it All right? Go ahead and start reciting the alphabet now 11, 6, 2, 15, 6, 18, 11. How was that. How far over the alphabet did you get? Were you able to add three? Let's try multitasking while tasks switching. So you're going to now recite the alphabet and you will alternate adding three with subtracting three. You ready, start on your alphabet. One, 15, nine, okay, okay, okay, pause. You're probably completely overwhelmed at this point. Forget it. I'm going to start torturing you or else you might never listen to my podcast again.

Speaker 1:

Point is multitasking while task switching is nearly impossible, and it's how I was running my day after day after day that first year as principal. I was trying to multitask and switch tasks constantly. Your brain just can't multitask and switch tasks constantly. Your brain just can't multitask. No matter how much you try to kid yourself, your brain can only focus on one cognitive task at a time. If you're playing a webinar in the background as you try to do emails, you're actually task switching. You're actually trying to do the webinar for like a few seconds. Then you're trying to get into your email and you do that for a few seconds. Then you try to go back to your webinar. Or, in this case, you were trying to recite the alphabet. You had to focus on adding three. Go back to the alphabet. Go back then to subtracting three. Come back to the alphabet. It's crazy making three. Back to the alphabet. It's crazy making.

Speaker 1:

The only times where it's even remotely possible is when it's a physical, automatic kind of thing like walking, so you can kind of walk and talk at the same time or walk and carry on some multitasking task. But even that has its costs. My favorite experiment that showed this took place at Western Washington University. They were watching pedestrians cross the campus square and they were noticing whether those pedestrians were either walking without distraction, listening to music, talking with a friend or talking on a phone. As you might guess, people that were talking on the phone had the greatest demands on their attention and time. So the people that were on their phone often weaved, changed direction as if they weren't fully aware of where they were going.

Speaker 1:

Well, these researchers threw into this mix a unicycling clown. These researchers threw into this mix a unicycling clown. Yes, there was a guy dressed up in a purple and yellow spotted clown suit, bright red nose, crazy clown shoes, on a unicycle circling around the square. After a pedestrian finished crossing the square, a researcher would go up to them and ask did you see anything unusual in the square? Now?

Speaker 1:

Pedestrians who are listening to music or walking alone, about 33% of them mentioned that they had seen a clown on a unicycle. If they were walking with a friend, maybe it was around 60%. Double the noticing powers. You had two pairs of eyes, but among the people who were talking on a cell phone, only 8% remembered the clown. Then researchers followed up with another question. At first, remember. They asked did you see anything unusual? Well then, the second question was for those people who didn't mention the clown did you see a unicycling clown? For that the numbers jumped. So the people who were listening to music or walking alone, the numbers jumped from 33% before to 51% or 61% later on when they were prompted. Of the people who are walking with a friend, it jumped from 60% to 71%. But of the people who are walking and talking on a cell phone, those 8% who spontaneously remembered jumped to 25%. Only 25% saw the clown.

Speaker 1:

The moral of this clown story is that even the things that we typically think of as pretty benign listening to music, walking on your own those things you still don't have the observational powers that you might think you do. And as soon as you start multitasking walking and talking on a phone only 25% can notice the other things around you. You're just not very good at switching tasks and focusing on two things at once, so take a pause. I want to introduce the tips of the week. What can you do about this? And I'm going to give you three strategies, not just one. The first strategy is no multitasking. Pick one thing at a time, what is currently most important to you, and do that thing. If you want to go way deeper into this, go back to episode five on overwhelm, where we talk about taking a million things and narrowing them down to three. But tip number one is do your best not to multitask. Number two time block.

Speaker 1:

Time blocking is this idea that what you can do is avoid time confetti by setting aside focus blocks. Do is avoid time confetti by setting aside focus blocks. So you schedule, just like you would, a meeting time to focus on that grant report that you have to write, or this communication that has to go out, or this design project that has to happen. You create a focus block on your calendar. Start with one block per week. That's it. If you can try to make that block 90 minutes long, something without distraction, where you can clear your calendar and just create time for the thing that you think is really important. That would be amazing. And gradually you can work up to one focus block a day, or even two or three focus blocks per day, with breaks in between. If you haven't ever time blocked before, this is way easier said than done. You have to shut off all those emails, texts, message pings and dings. You have to isolate yourself from other people, which means communicating with the people in the office or your family that you need time alone and that this is sacred time for you.

Speaker 1:

I was working with a client, one who had several kids and worked at home. She wanted to create four-hour focus blocks every morning so that she could finally find uninterrupted time for brain-intensive projects. To create it she had to get the support of her husband. She had to have a family meeting with the kids. She had to talk to a colleague at work about her new early start times and early end times at work. But when all of those things happened, she was able to create half her day in these focus blocks and that was transformative for her. So time blocking can truly be a life-changing thing if you can make it happen.

Speaker 1:

So that's tip number two. Tip number three bunch the little things. So you might be thinking what about all the little things? Emails, responding to texts, picking up the house, little errands, all the shoulds, the interruptions? Yes, there is importance in making sure there are time for those, but, like I said in episode five, let those things fill in around the edges or bunch them into a block of their own. So when you bunch the little things, what you do is you gather up all of those little things and you put them into a single block. Your brain can rest and not try to churn through them or try to keep them in your working memory, because there's a time and space for them to get done. And you've made a list and you're just keeping a running list.

Speaker 1:

I have a communications block every day, which is a one hour long period where I respond to emails and texts, and I have 15 minutes of social media. That's what my hour is about. When I was a principal, I needed more than that. There were too many emails and texts coming in and I needed to respond more frequently. So, as principal, what I created was bunching the little things into 30 minutes at the start of the day, 30 minutes right after lunch and one hour at the very end of the day. The rest of the time I could more or less ignore all of my emails and shut my email browser. I trained staff to give me a call if it was a true emergency, so that I knew that if they needed me I would be able to respond right away. But otherwise, all those little things had a time and a space to be. I hope those strategies might be helpful to you All. Right back to the show.

Speaker 1:

So we were talking about multitasking and how difficult that can be. Well, part of the problem of my multitasking as a principal was all of those thoughts and ideas swirling in my head when I was at night lying down and I finally could rest. I couldn't actually rest because my mind kept churning through all of the tasks, all of the to-do items, all of the things that I felt like I had to remember. So one of the solutions to that is to write it all down. I called it my parking lot, or sometimes I even call it a someday maybe list. It was just a place to dump out all of those tasks and to-dos that were swirling in my head, Somehow, by having an external brain somewhere where I could put all those things. It allowed my mind to settle and rest, and I still keep a parking lot and someday maybe list. Today. That is a super helpful practice to be able to stop trying to multitask and hold it all and instead be able to focus on the things that you are really honed in on right now.

Speaker 1:

And all of that goes back to what we talked about last episode, that you have two brain systems. One is the executive attention network, a set of interconnected brain areas that are designed for focused, goal-directed problem solving, and then you have the default mode network, a different set of brain areas that are activated for self-reflection, daydreaming and mind-watering. What's best for your brain is to cycle between executive attention mode and default mode. When you can cycle between those throughout the day, finding a pattern that works for you, that can lead to what time researchers call time serenity. Instead of your time being chopped up into all of this confetti, time seems to naturally flow with your own rhythm of the day. It's what Tony Schwartz calls pulsing.

Speaker 1:

You focus for a dedicated, devoted period of time. For some people that's 30 minutes, other people it's two hours. On average it's about 90 minutes. So you pulse into a dedicated, devoted focus of work for about 90 minutes and then you take a break. You do something that is completely brain different. So if you were focusing on a screen, get off your screen, go outdoors. If you were focusing with pen and paper and writing, do something that is far away from pen and paper, tactile, in a completely different way. What you're trying to do is activate very different brain systems so that your breaks are actual, genuine breaks, something that is different from what you were doing before. This kind of practice the pulsing or the cycling between executive attention and default mode is supported by a ton of research on the best ways to work for greatest productivity.

Speaker 1:

It's not that you want unbroken stretches chained to your desk. You definitely don't want multitasking and time confetti. Instead, you want this natural cycle that follows your human rhythm of intense focus and then a relaxed break, just like those kids on the playground. You want to be learning for a period of time and then you want to go and take a recess. So see if you can do something like that for yourself and use that to make time confetti disappear and turn into time serenity. So that's it for this episode on time management.

Speaker 1:

I would love to thank three people who helped me stay far, far, far away from time confetti. Tyler Lockamy, my sound producer and engineer, who does all of the sound design work here. Robin Canfield, who does my website and makes sure that all of the back end that you see there is up to date. And Tessa Borquez, my chief operating officer, who keeps my head on straight. In the show notes you can find a link to Overwhelmed by Bridget Schulte. You'll find Tony Schwartz's work on time management, as well as a whole host of other resources for all of us trying desperately for a little time serenity.

Speaker 1:

Finally, would you please do me two favors. Do you know of a leader or friend who is surviving, not thriving? Maybe they need to learn how to manage their time? If so, text them a link to the show and, secondly, please click that follow button on Spotify, google, apple or wherever you get your podcasts. The next episode is going to go deep into how to become a master at what you do and into the science of neuroplasticity. Did you know that even adult brains can birth new neurons? No, neither did neuroscientists 40 years ago. You're going to hear all about that story and more next time on the Leader's Playground.

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Irene Salter, PhD

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