JOURNAL: Is Scanning and Situational Awareness a cure for Multitasking Drift?
If you are like me, you interact with a flood of information, online networks, and people everyday. To handle it all, we multitask. Unfortunately, it's easy to get off track or drift off course while multi-tasking.
This occurs because the act of multi-tasking -- responding to an e-mail/tweet/phone call, adding a new post/picture, etc. -- becomes an end in itself, rather than a means to an end. That's understandable, since when we successfully complete interactions on twitter or SMS, studies have shown we get a hit of brain chemicals that stimulate us. We feel smarter and more successful, even when we aren't.
This trap, is something professional pilots have found a way to fight.
Scanning
Flying (successfully) is a form of extreme multitasking, particularly when flying on instruments in the weather or at extremely low levels at night (something I specialized in). Pilots organize their multitasking by scanning the information sources (the radio, altimeter, outside, intercom, airspeed, attitude indicator, etc.) in a very organized manner and modifying that scan depending on the type of flying being done. The scan ensures that no useful bit of information is missed. It also allocates time efficiently.
How do you build a scan for online multitasking? Build a checklist.
The other trick pilots learn is situational awareness. It's easy to drift while doing a multi-tasking scan. This is what pilots call "heads down" or "head up and locked" flight. A pilot so engrossed in a loop of information they are processing that they fly into the ground or another plane. There's a very strong parallel between this and getting lost in online media. You could spend a day interacting with it and get nothing done. Some people even drive their careers, businesses and lives off a cliff interacting with it. They think they are getting things done, but they aren't getting anything done at all.
The way to fight this is situational awareness. The little part of your brain that is ALWAYS asking you the questions:
This occurs because the act of multi-tasking -- responding to an e-mail/tweet/phone call, adding a new post/picture, etc. -- becomes an end in itself, rather than a means to an end. That's understandable, since when we successfully complete interactions on twitter or SMS, studies have shown we get a hit of brain chemicals that stimulate us. We feel smarter and more successful, even when we aren't.
This trap, is something professional pilots have found a way to fight.
Scanning
Flying (successfully) is a form of extreme multitasking, particularly when flying on instruments in the weather or at extremely low levels at night (something I specialized in). Pilots organize their multitasking by scanning the information sources (the radio, altimeter, outside, intercom, airspeed, attitude indicator, etc.) in a very organized manner and modifying that scan depending on the type of flying being done. The scan ensures that no useful bit of information is missed. It also allocates time efficiently.
How do you build a scan for online multitasking? Build a checklist.
- List the online tasks you want/need to keep up with.
- Organize the list from the most important task to the least. Repeat important tasks in the list if the intervening tasks take you away too long from that important task.
- After you go through enough scans to clear the deck, take a break to work on items that require long term thinking.
The other trick pilots learn is situational awareness. It's easy to drift while doing a multi-tasking scan. This is what pilots call "heads down" or "head up and locked" flight. A pilot so engrossed in a loop of information they are processing that they fly into the ground or another plane. There's a very strong parallel between this and getting lost in online media. You could spend a day interacting with it and get nothing done. Some people even drive their careers, businesses and lives off a cliff interacting with it. They think they are getting things done, but they aren't getting anything done at all.
The way to fight this is situational awareness. The little part of your brain that is ALWAYS asking you the questions:
- Where am I and what am I doing?
- Am I progressing towards my goal?
- Am I in any danger or is there a way to get to the goal faster?
- Asking a friend to lambast you every 10-30 minutes with these questions until you nail it every time.
- Setting a random alarm that forces you to lift yourself out of your multi-tasking stupor to ask yourself these questions.
- Or, and this is the most difficult way, do your entire scan with intentional, conscious thought. Justifying each and every step until it becomes second nature.
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