Humans can do a lot of things well, but there's one thing we can't: do multiple things at the same time. There are a lot of studies that show that we don't multitask, but I keep seeing articles online that try to go against basic human nature.

"The biggest misconception is that we are actually doing two things at once. That’s not how our brains work. What’s happening is our brains are rapidly switching between tasks. It feels like we’re doing things simultaneously, but we’re really just shifting our attention very, very quickly. When it comes to focusing on tasks, we’re serial processors, not parallel processors."

Wake Forest News

My proposal is the following: take advantage of what our brain does best (serial processing) while completing multiple tasks, effectively achieving multitasking with better results.

It's all about mindset and a bit of organization, so let's take a look at the problem and, in my opinion, a solution that could help you.

The problem

We all juggle multiple todo lists, emails, calendars, and meetings pulling us in different directions. That's just how work is. If you're a consultant, you manage multiple clients with multiple projects. If you work at a company, you have different responsibilities, recurring tasks, and people constantly needing things from you.

So what do we do? We try to parallelize everything. We answer emails while in meetings, write reports using AI without checking them, and end up exhausted at the end of the day having done nothing properly.

Instead of the best of both worlds, we get the worst of both. We miss important information from the meeting and forget to put stuff in the email. Both actions done in "parallel" but not done correctly.

The problem isn't having multiple things to do—that's unavoidable. The problem is how we try to handle them.

So how do we fix this?

It's all about grouping (and a bit of planning)

I'm sure that there are a lot of gurus with properly trademarked names for this in a proper 10-step process that will make you work only a few hours a day, but for all of us that live in the real world, there's a simpler way to do this.

It all boils down to grouping tasks. Ideally, tasks where completing one means the others are partially (or fully) done. That's it.

Group things and do them in the same context. You're already doing it, so why not tackle something similar or related? No context switching, and focused work on multiple things at the same time.

Let's use an example to make things simpler.

You're preparing a meal for a group of people, so let's consider that we have:

• starters
• main dish
• dessert (or multiple if you're in my family)

You need ingredients for all of them. It would never cross your mind to prepare the starters, sit down to eat, then get up to start the main dish while people are waiting. The context switching would be huge (from eating and enjoying the company at the table to back to the kitchen).

You also wouldn't go to the store three times (once for each course). That's wasted effort. Instead, you naturally group things. You make one shopping list, do one trip to the store, and cook everything in one session. Then you bring things to the table as people are ready, even if you bring first the starters and once people finish you bring the main dish.

No one taught you this. You just do it because it makes sense.

Let's extend more the analogy. Say you have 2 main dishes that share a common ingredient—like onions. You chop them once for both dishes. That's one action completing two tasks. This task is amazing because you do it once for 2 things, effectively doing 2 things at the same time, since "cut onions" was in both dishes "to-do" list.

All of this is intuitive for cooking, and we do it automatically, so why not apply it to our work?

Sometimes it takes a bit more time

If you don't cook, probably the example doesn't resonate with you. So here's another one, based on what I'm doing right now: writing this article.

This site was completely redesigned recently and that required me to change the way I write and publish the articles.

When I was building it, I tested things based on what I knew at the time. Things worked, but I knew there would be issues I hadn't thought of, and things that could be improved.

Instead of finishing the site and then sitting down to "think of improvements," I'm finding them by writing this article. As I write, I notice what doesn't work well and put them in the list. I don't need to fix them right away, but I write them down.

So I'm doing 2 things at the same time: writing an article and testing the site. The article takes a bit longer, but writing is actually better than testing because I'm hitting real problems.

After I fix the issues, I'll write another article. If something else breaks or doesn't make sense, I'll note it. Repeat until things run smoothly (that could take a while but I'll work on that).

When you think about it, I'm doing 3 things at once: writing, testing the process, and finding improvements. If I had kept testing and improving for later, I'd probably sit there with a blank to-do list, trying to imagine problems that only show up when you're actually using the thing.

Grouping doesn't always mean one task replaces another directly. Sometimes it means spending a bit more time on one task to make others easier—or unnecessary.

Quick Reference

Let's try to create a mental model that you can follow.

Simple and effective.

It's not always possible, but when it is, it's a great feeling to only spend time on a task once.

This also works for problem-solving. Say you have a problem in a report, and someone asks you to redo it as a presentation. If you fix the report first without looking at the full task list, you've wasted time—the report is getting replaced anyway.

Final Thoughts

I hope this helps you as much as it helped me.

This is not new and there are a lot of these with different names, but I wanted to distill it to a simple idea that you could try.

It's intuitive and natural to us, but we end up not applying it. Being aware is the first step.

Doing things faster is not always the fastest way to get things done. Sometimes slowing down to look at the full picture saves more time than rushing through tasks one by one.

As always, no solution is a one-size-fits-all, so it's important to know and educate yourself, try it out and then, if it works, use it (or adapt it to your specific needs).

Photo by Adhitya Sibikumar on Unsplash