AMA #11: Improve Task Switching & Productivity and Reduce Brain Fog

00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:00:02.260 | where we discuss science and science-based tools

00:00:04.900 | for everyday life.

00:00:05.900 | I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology

00:00:12.260 | and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:15.340 | Today is an Ask Me Anything episode or AMA.

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00:01:42.600 | So without further ado,

00:01:44.180 | let's get to answering your questions.

00:01:46.540 | The first question is about task switching.

00:01:49.300 | And the specific question is,

00:01:51.580 | is there a way to get better at task switching?

00:01:55.100 | Well, task switching is an incredibly interesting topic.

00:01:58.900 | It's something that plagues many people.

00:02:01.360 | That is a lot of people have challenges with task switching.

00:02:04.460 | It's also a topic that people will often confuse

00:02:07.940 | with cognitive flexibility.

00:02:10.260 | So all of us, well, unless it's been removed,

00:02:13.380 | have an area of our brain called the prefrontal cortex.

00:02:16.380 | The words prefrontal cortex actually refers

00:02:18.460 | to a fairly varied real estate within the human brain.

00:02:22.280 | So it's not one area of the human brain.

00:02:24.360 | Prefrontal cortex actually includes

00:02:26.220 | a lot of different subdivisions that do different things

00:02:28.920 | in the context of cognition and directing action,

00:02:32.200 | withholding action, these kinds of things.

00:02:34.340 | But one of the main functions of the prefrontal cortex

00:02:36.700 | is that when it's working well,

00:02:38.900 | it allows us to direct our focus and our cognition,

00:02:42.740 | our thinking in a context dependent way.

00:02:46.540 | So one of the simplest ways to describe this

00:02:49.660 | is that when you took math in high school,

00:02:51.980 | or if you're still taking math,

00:02:53.400 | your brain had to carry out certain types

00:02:55.020 | of cognitive operations that were very different

00:02:57.500 | than the types of cognitive operations

00:02:58.960 | that you'd need to carry out in your history class

00:03:01.360 | or your social studies class.

00:03:03.380 | But there were some features of all three of those classes

00:03:07.100 | that were the same in the sense that presumably

00:03:09.980 | you had to sit in a chair for all of those classes.

00:03:12.460 | You followed a certain set of rules

00:03:14.180 | that pertain to all three of those different classes,

00:03:16.320 | even though they're different subjects.

00:03:17.420 | But then there were certain rules

00:03:19.060 | that pertain just to mathematics.

00:03:20.780 | Certain rules that you followed because a particular teacher

00:03:23.600 | was strict, not because of the topic they were covering,

00:03:26.280 | as well as certain rules

00:03:27.640 | that maybe you did not pay attention to

00:03:29.040 | because a different teacher was a little more lax.

00:03:31.120 | For instance, maybe there was a teacher

00:03:32.240 | that let you put your feet up on the chair in front of you.

00:03:34.400 | Maybe another teacher forbid that at all costs.

00:03:37.480 | The point being that your prefrontal cortex

00:03:39.440 | is the area of your brain that,

00:03:41.840 | along with other areas of your brain,

00:03:43.720 | ensures that you engage in context specific behavior,

00:03:47.360 | context specific thinking, and context specific understanding

00:03:52.360 | about what you should and should not do.

00:03:54.980 | Now, cognitive flexibility is similar

00:03:57.220 | in the sense that it describes your ability

00:04:00.340 | to switch the types of cognitive operations,

00:04:03.260 | as the name suggests,

00:04:04.960 | depending on what sorts of things

00:04:06.700 | you're trying to learn or understand.

00:04:08.500 | And it's a lot more extensive than that.

00:04:09.860 | In fact, we will probably do an entire episode

00:04:11.620 | all about both cognitive flexibility

00:04:13.740 | and perhaps even a separate episode on task switching.

00:04:16.160 | But task switching is somewhat distinct

00:04:18.080 | from cognitive flexibility.

00:04:19.360 | First of all, task switching requires cognitive flexibility,

00:04:23.120 | but they are not the same thing.

00:04:25.080 | Now, when we talk about task switching,

00:04:27.640 | or rather when you see task switching

00:04:28.980 | in the scientific literature,

00:04:30.480 | most often it has to do with people performing

00:04:33.600 | one particular type of mental or physical operation,

00:04:38.600 | or say they're maneuvering things with their hands

00:04:41.500 | or other parts of their body,

00:04:43.440 | or they are required to carry out one specific type

00:04:46.560 | of mental process.

00:04:48.360 | And then they are required either at random intervals

00:04:52.320 | or at specific intervals, maybe every 10 minutes or so,

00:04:54.800 | to switch their attention

00:04:57.200 | and to do a different task entirely.

00:04:59.460 | Now, in the laboratory experiment situation,

00:05:02.220 | this has most typically been carried out the following way.

00:05:04.700 | People are going to do one cognitive task,

00:05:07.660 | maybe mathematics, or they're going to count, for instance,

00:05:11.940 | from one up to infinity,

00:05:15.640 | as high as they can go in a given amount of time,

00:05:18.020 | in increments of, say, seven,

00:05:20.880 | or increments of seven plus one, then seven minus one.

00:05:24.740 | So these can be made increasingly difficult.

00:05:26.460 | You get the idea.

00:05:27.380 | And then perhaps a tone is played,

00:05:29.500 | or they'll get a signal from the experimenter,

00:05:31.100 | and then they need to switch their task

00:05:33.180 | to doing something quite different, but also cognitive.

00:05:35.680 | That's the most typical arrangement.

00:05:38.180 | Or another typical arrangement

00:05:39.520 | in a task switching experiment

00:05:41.300 | is that the subject,

00:05:42.260 | the person in the task switching experiment,

00:05:44.000 | will be asked to do

00:05:45.100 | some sort of physical manipulation of objects,

00:05:47.680 | maybe placement of puzzle pieces

00:05:49.860 | into the correct configuration.

00:05:52.080 | Then at some designated interval or intervals,

00:05:55.700 | they will have to switch to a different manual task.

00:05:59.620 | Fewer, not zero, but fewer experiments

00:06:02.420 | have examined task switching

00:06:03.900 | between physical and cognitive tasks, okay?

00:06:08.100 | Now, there are these kind of outrageous examples

00:06:10.200 | that you can find on the internet.

00:06:11.380 | And by the way, I don't suggest that anyone go engage

00:06:14.080 | in these examples in real life

00:06:15.780 | of kind of extreme task switching.

00:06:17.520 | One of the most notable ones would be chess boxing.

00:06:20.340 | Believe it or not, this exists,

00:06:21.420 | where two people will enter a ring,

00:06:23.720 | and they will sit down at a table,

00:06:26.160 | and they will play chess for a given period of time.

00:06:29.900 | So they're entirely focused on playing chess.

00:06:32.500 | Then a buzzer will go off, the chess table will be cleared,

00:06:34.960 | the chairs will be cleared,

00:06:35.840 | and they will be expected to box, literally,

00:06:38.900 | fight for a round of, say, a minute to three minutes,

00:06:42.780 | and then go back to chess, then to boxing,

00:06:44.980 | so-called chess boxing.

00:06:46.320 | Again, I'm not suggesting people chess box,

00:06:49.040 | but I know that many people have challenges

00:06:51.960 | with task switching, and here I can raise my hand

00:06:54.260 | and say that I am one such person.

00:06:56.480 | I've always had a pretty good ability

00:06:59.340 | to drop into deep focus after a period of time.

00:07:03.220 | I, like everybody else, takes a little bit of time

00:07:04.820 | to get into a book chapter

00:07:06.560 | or to get into a mode of physical exercise.

00:07:09.520 | But once I'm doing something,

00:07:10.800 | I tend to be very, very focused on that,

00:07:12.680 | and I have a much greater challenge

00:07:14.440 | in switching out of that focus mode to doing the next thing,

00:07:17.600 | which is one of the reasons why oftentimes I run tardy

00:07:20.160 | because I'm still mentally thinking about

00:07:22.960 | or physically engaged in the thing that I was doing before.

00:07:26.160 | This is something I'm constantly working on.

00:07:27.800 | And as a consequence, I've had to seek out

00:07:29.280 | and implement certain tools

00:07:30.480 | to improve my ability to task switch.

00:07:32.240 | So I'm going to share a few of those tools with you now,

00:07:35.240 | because I know a number of people probably struggle

00:07:37.200 | with the same thing.

00:07:38.740 | And as I mentioned earlier,

00:07:40.760 | I'm also going to do a full length episode

00:07:42.900 | about task switching,

00:07:43.740 | both the underlying mechanisms of task switching,

00:07:46.120 | as well as a more extensive list of tools

00:07:48.200 | related to task switching

00:07:49.520 | as a full length Huberman Lab podcast episode.

00:07:52.020 | So how can we get better at task switching?

00:07:53.640 | Well, short of having somebody scruff you by the neck

00:07:56.240 | and force you to stop whatever activity you're doing

00:07:58.860 | and engage in the next activity that you're doing,

00:08:01.560 | one of the best things that we can do

00:08:03.400 | to support our ability to task switch

00:08:05.120 | that's nicely supported both at the mechanistic level

00:08:08.400 | and at the practical level within the published literature

00:08:12.320 | is to introduce short transition gaps

00:08:15.320 | between the activities that we're trying to switch between.

00:08:18.820 | This is something that, in my opinion,

00:08:20.180 | has not been discussed enough.

00:08:21.720 | In fact, when was the last time you heard

00:08:23.080 | about the requirement for introducing gaps between tasks

00:08:27.000 | if you want to switch between them more efficiently?

00:08:29.200 | And yet, as a consequence

00:08:30.320 | of this not being discussed very often,

00:08:32.180 | I think a lot of people have placed an undue burden

00:08:35.020 | on themselves.

00:08:35.940 | For instance, a lot of people think

00:08:37.280 | that when you sit down with a book and you're going to read

00:08:40.440 | that you should be able to immediately focus

00:08:44.340 | on the material that you're reading

00:08:45.540 | and not have your mind flitting about.

00:08:47.800 | During the first five, maybe even 10 minutes

00:08:50.700 | of reading a book chapter,

00:08:51.760 | unless you are absolutely enthralled from the first word

00:08:56.660 | or you are intensely curious

00:09:00.020 | what the material in that book chapter is, right?

00:09:03.060 | Maybe that book chapter is about you

00:09:04.560 | and what's going to happen to you next in your life.

00:09:06.280 | Maybe the news article is about something

00:09:08.160 | that you care oh so much about,

00:09:09.800 | but unless it's one of those specific instances,

00:09:13.760 | it's going to be about five or 10 minutes

00:09:15.500 | before the neural circuits in your brain

00:09:17.080 | that are required to understand and digest

00:09:20.020 | and commit that material to memory

00:09:22.060 | are going to come online at the levels of activity

00:09:25.160 | that are going to be required for you to experience that

00:09:28.580 | as intense focus or even as mild focus,

00:09:31.840 | because the activity of the brain

00:09:33.740 | is always going to be in a push-pull.

00:09:35.900 | This is extremely important for understanding task switching.

00:09:38.460 | When you go from one task,

00:09:40.820 | and maybe the task was simply to walk over

00:09:42.460 | to where the book is located,

00:09:44.060 | to focusing on the material within that book,

00:09:47.220 | you have to both engage activity

00:09:49.860 | within certain neural circuits

00:09:51.540 | and you need to disengage the activity

00:09:54.220 | of other neural circuits.

00:09:55.700 | Now, sometimes this is referred to

00:09:57.500 | as inhibition of certain neural circuits.

00:09:59.500 | Other times, it's just going to be a dissipation of activity

00:10:01.900 | of those neural circuits.

00:10:02.740 | It's just going to quiet down

00:10:04.140 | like a dimming of the lights in a particular room

00:10:06.540 | while the activity of other neural circuits increases.

00:10:10.120 | Okay, so the first thing that you really need to understand

00:10:12.500 | if you want to get better at task switching

00:10:13.820 | is that you cannot and you should not expect yourself

00:10:17.140 | to immediately drop into a narrow trench of focus

00:10:20.400 | or a narrow trench of ability

00:10:22.580 | for anything that you're not already extremely skilled at

00:10:26.180 | or extremely interested in knowing, okay?

00:10:29.820 | One of the reasons why this is often overlooked

00:10:31.780 | is that, for instance,

00:10:33.880 | if we receive a text message from somebody

00:10:36.500 | and we are very interested

00:10:38.180 | in what's contained in that text message,

00:10:39.740 | maybe even eagerly anticipating the dot, dot, dot

00:10:43.660 | in that little window

00:10:44.900 | where the text message is going to arrive,

00:10:46.180 | like here it comes, here it comes, here it comes,

00:10:47.680 | it's an example of where you are able

00:10:50.920 | to immediately pay attention and absorb information.

00:10:53.880 | For instance, if you're trying to meet somebody

00:10:55.940 | in a big city and you need to know exactly where to meet them

00:10:57.920 | and you've arrived at the place

00:10:59.060 | where you thought you need to be

00:11:00.040 | and then you can't find them and you're waiting, waiting,

00:11:01.700 | where are you, where are you?

00:11:02.600 | And you're going to commit that information to memory

00:11:04.780 | and you're going to act on it.

00:11:05.940 | But when you sit down to read a book of unknown content

00:11:08.940 | or where you have just a general sense

00:11:10.660 | of what the content is,

00:11:11.560 | or when you sit down to do something

00:11:13.260 | like work on a spreadsheet or your taxes

00:11:15.580 | or engage in a conversation with somebody,

00:11:18.020 | expect a five to 10 minute transition period.

00:11:20.300 | I can't emphasize this enough

00:11:21.540 | because I think a lot of people mistakenly think

00:11:24.620 | that they have issues with attention

00:11:26.940 | and perhaps indeed they have clinically diagnosable

00:11:30.020 | attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

00:11:33.200 | or some other form of attention deficit disorder.

00:11:36.120 | Certainly can't rule that out

00:11:37.200 | based on this conversation alone,

00:11:38.900 | but a lot of people place this unfair burden on themselves

00:11:43.420 | to immediately be able to focus on a given task.

00:11:46.460 | And this is also true for physical tasks, right?

00:11:48.880 | If you go to the gym to work out

00:11:51.940 | or you're heading out on a run or a cycling expedition,

00:11:55.900 | the idea that you would immediately be able to cycle

00:11:59.340 | at your peak performance

00:12:00.480 | or that you could perform sets and reps in the gym

00:12:03.300 | and as best as you possibly could without any warmup,

00:12:05.940 | without any transition period,

00:12:07.500 | that you could forget about the difficult

00:12:09.500 | or maybe even great conversation

00:12:10.860 | that you were having on the way in,

00:12:12.620 | or that you could forget about other activities

00:12:14.500 | that you need to do in the rest of your day.

00:12:16.580 | I mean, that's just completely unfair

00:12:18.480 | and it doesn't match at all

00:12:20.200 | the way that your neural circuits work.

00:12:22.500 | So you really need to match your expectation

00:12:25.180 | of your ability to focus on and perform a given task,

00:12:28.360 | whether or not it's cognitive or physical

00:12:30.180 | to the actual underlying biology, okay?

00:12:32.040 | So that's the first point.

00:12:33.320 | The second point is that we know

00:12:36.700 | that if you want to switch from one task to another task,

00:12:41.160 | that you are making it more difficult

00:12:44.400 | to drop into full task engagement

00:12:47.340 | or rather engagement with task B, following task A,

00:12:52.340 | if you try and go immediately from task A to task B,

00:12:55.360 | that even the introduction, I find this so cool,

00:12:58.180 | even the introduction of an arbitrary

00:13:01.340 | but very short transition period of say 15 seconds,

00:13:04.960 | where you know that you're introducing 15 seconds

00:13:08.260 | of transition and you designate it as transition,

00:13:11.580 | will allow you to engage in a more efficient

00:13:13.560 | and more complete level of task execution on task B,

00:13:18.560 | if you introduce even a brief transition period.

00:13:22.020 | Now, this I find fascinating because what this means

00:13:25.840 | is that there are top-down influences.

00:13:28.200 | There are literally things that we can tell ourselves

00:13:30.320 | based on an understanding of the underlying mechanisms

00:13:33.480 | that allow us to task switch better.

00:13:35.480 | And this certainly doesn't involve taking any kind

00:13:37.520 | of prescription drug or supplement

00:13:39.240 | or doing anything differently,

00:13:40.720 | except as you go from task A to task B,

00:13:45.720 | knowing and designating that a transition period,

00:13:49.000 | even a very brief one,

00:13:50.800 | where you are not trying to perform task B

00:13:53.120 | and that you designated this as a transition period,

00:13:55.760 | I'm not trying to focus on the next thing that I need to do.

00:13:59.880 | I might focus on it inadvertently,

00:14:01.420 | but I'm not deliberately trying to focus on it.

00:14:05.360 | Rather, I'm going to think about what I just did

00:14:08.080 | and the fact that I'm no longer doing that,

00:14:09.880 | kind of leaving it like a fog behind, right?

00:14:12.460 | You're trying to move from this deep trench of attention,

00:14:15.200 | hopefully on task A,

00:14:16.400 | or maybe you didn't achieve a deep trench of attention,

00:14:19.120 | and you're now done with task A,

00:14:21.460 | and you're not placing this unfair expectation

00:14:24.720 | on your neural circuits to just flip to task B.

00:14:27.960 | And you're also acknowledging that task B

00:14:30.120 | is going to take five to 10 minutes to drop into fully,

00:14:32.980 | we already talked about that,

00:14:34.240 | but you're going to shorten that five to 10 minutes

00:14:37.040 | by deliberately introducing a transition period.

00:14:40.600 | And what comes in that transition period

00:14:42.440 | and its duration is important.

00:14:44.520 | So first let's deal with the duration.

00:14:47.060 | How long should the transition period be?

00:14:49.200 | Well, that is going to scale directly

00:14:51.880 | with how long you were in a deep trench of focus for task A,

00:14:55.780 | but let's assume task A was something

00:14:57.180 | that was kind of light for you.

00:14:58.400 | Maybe you're just handling some email.

00:14:59.740 | Maybe you're talking to a coworker.

00:15:01.960 | Maybe you were at a board meeting and it was kind of light.

00:15:04.800 | You know, the stuff was just okay,

00:15:05.920 | that you're used to this stuff.

00:15:06.760 | This is stuff that you do all the time.

00:15:08.540 | Now you're headed back to your desk

00:15:10.260 | or you're headed to your next class,

00:15:12.000 | or perhaps you did a workout that morning

00:15:14.020 | and now you're going to head to your workplace of work,

00:15:17.560 | or maybe you're leaving work

00:15:18.680 | and you're going to engage with family.

00:15:20.640 | And you know you need to switch

00:15:23.320 | all these cognitive operations.

00:15:24.640 | You need to dump the stuff

00:15:25.660 | that you were just doing cognitively

00:15:27.200 | and you now need to do a bunch of other things.

00:15:29.540 | Context is switching, task is switching.

00:15:33.060 | Well, just ask yourself,

00:15:35.120 | how deeply was I entrenched in that other activity?

00:15:37.820 | Was my mind flitting to other things?

00:15:39.760 | Or if I was in a deep trench of attention

00:15:43.180 | for that given thing,

00:15:44.600 | well, then you should give yourself slightly longer

00:15:47.040 | for this transition period,

00:15:48.280 | maybe five or even 10 minutes.

00:15:50.240 | If you have that time.

00:15:51.760 | But even if you give yourself

00:15:53.120 | as short as 60 to 90 seconds of transition

00:15:55.560 | and you just designate it, excuse me, as transition,

00:15:58.720 | you're going to benefit in terms of your ability

00:16:00.440 | to do the next task.

00:16:01.760 | So to be very clear,

00:16:03.160 | if you were in kind of a light task

00:16:04.760 | or something that didn't have much cognitive demand,

00:16:07.380 | well, then the transition period can be fairly short.

00:16:09.840 | It can be just a couple of minutes.

00:16:12.060 | Rather, if you were in a deep trench of attention,

00:16:14.520 | you're really engaged in that first task.

00:16:17.440 | I suggest giving yourself a couple of minutes or more,

00:16:20.040 | maybe as much as five to 10 minutes.

00:16:21.840 | But you might not have that much time,

00:16:23.100 | in which case give yourself any kind of transition,

00:16:25.480 | even if it's 10 seconds.

00:16:26.960 | I certainly have had times in my life,

00:16:29.420 | in particular, when I was a new assistant professor,

00:16:31.960 | meaning before I got tenure,

00:16:33.680 | where I remember sitting down to work on a grant,

00:16:35.640 | I'd get two lines out, someone would knock on the door.

00:16:37.800 | Hey, where are the, whatever the 30 mil syringe is?

00:16:40.560 | Where do we keep the buffers?

00:16:41.760 | Or where's the, did we get this thing into?

00:16:44.400 | Okay, and then I'd have to shift my attention.

00:16:46.160 | I'd go back to writing

00:16:46.980 | and then be distracted by something else again,

00:16:49.240 | which is not to say that people were distracting me unfairly.

00:16:51.800 | It was simply the case that at that time,

00:16:54.360 | my life required being involved in a lot more things

00:16:57.380 | than it did as my career progressed,

00:16:59.160 | at least in the short term.

00:17:01.080 | So the point being that if you are deeply engaged

00:17:04.640 | in activity, give yourself a little bit longer

00:17:06.340 | in the transition period between them.

00:17:08.120 | If you are sort of superficially involved in activity,

00:17:11.480 | you need less of a transition period,

00:17:12.980 | but you need a transition period.

00:17:14.600 | What should come during that transition period?

00:17:16.640 | Well, the most important thing to arrive

00:17:19.240 | in that transition period is a relative lack of attention

00:17:23.080 | to anything new.

00:17:24.240 | This is what's so destructive about the phone.

00:17:26.480 | And keep in mind, I am not one of these people

00:17:28.760 | that thinks that smartphones are terrible.

00:17:30.760 | In fact, I use mine, plural, very often, all day often.

00:17:35.760 | Not necessarily during deep cognitive focus,

00:17:38.920 | but in between those bouts of focus,

00:17:40.920 | I have to text message people.

00:17:42.240 | I do work on there, I'm on social media.

00:17:44.580 | So certainly not demonizing the smartphone.

00:17:47.580 | However, if you finish a given activity,

00:17:50.700 | whether or not it's cognitive or physical activity,

00:17:52.620 | and you are headed to something else that requires

00:17:55.960 | you do a new task and that that task requires

00:17:59.660 | significant amounts of attention and focus,

00:18:02.260 | well, then you would do very well to allow yourself

00:18:04.480 | a period of anywhere from two minutes

00:18:06.800 | to maybe as long as 10 minutes.

00:18:08.440 | I know this is going to be very hard for people,

00:18:09.700 | but two minutes to as long as 10 minutes,

00:18:12.340 | where you are not looking at your phone,

00:18:15.040 | you're not texting, you're not on social media,

00:18:18.060 | you're not foraging for anything.

00:18:19.720 | In fact, you're trying to limit the total amount

00:18:21.440 | of information that you're bringing

00:18:22.520 | into your nervous system.

00:18:23.360 | Now you don't have to walk around with eyes closed

00:18:25.600 | and try and not hear and not see, let's be practical folks,

00:18:28.480 | that's impossible to do anyway.

00:18:29.800 | You can't shut down your brain while awake.

00:18:32.720 | You can go into states of deeper relaxation.

00:18:35.360 | There's a non-sleep deep rest,

00:18:36.620 | which we'll talk about in a little bit,

00:18:38.020 | but you can't shut off your brain deliberately.

00:18:41.340 | Okay, not in any healthy way that is.

00:18:43.460 | But by introducing these transition zones

00:18:46.960 | or transition periods, as we'll call them,

00:18:49.120 | of two to 10 minutes between different tasks

00:18:51.420 | and making sure that within those transition periods,

00:18:54.300 | you are not bringing in new information.

00:18:57.280 | Again, another context, then what are you really doing?

00:18:59.720 | Well, you're ensuring that you're not going

00:19:01.020 | from task A to task B to task C, right?

00:19:04.880 | What we're talking about here is trying

00:19:06.680 | to limit your task switching between task A and task B

00:19:10.280 | and not introducing another task in between.

00:19:12.560 | And you might think that looking at your phone

00:19:15.180 | is not a task, right?

00:19:16.720 | It's so easy, it's so reflexive, but it is.

00:19:19.660 | It's bringing in a lot of new context,

00:19:22.420 | in particular pictures and movies,

00:19:23.960 | which are tremendous stimulus for the nervous system

00:19:26.140 | and anchoring your attention.

00:19:27.720 | It's bringing in new ideas, new thoughts

00:19:29.820 | that no matter how hard you try are going to intrude

00:19:33.680 | into your ability to perform task B.

00:19:36.660 | So when people say, how do I get better at task switching?

00:19:39.760 | I immediately want to say,

00:19:41.160 | please don't introduce yet more tasks, right?

00:19:43.480 | Switching from one task to another is hard enough already.

00:19:46.340 | Don't introduce another task in between.

00:19:48.320 | Now, some of you might take this to mean

00:19:50.620 | that you shouldn't have a conversation with a coworker

00:19:52.900 | after a meeting while walking down the hall.

00:19:54.760 | I'm not saying that.

00:19:55.880 | I still encourage people to be social.

00:19:58.360 | I encourage people to engage in workplace environments.

00:20:00.860 | However, I will say after many years of working

00:20:03.960 | in laboratories that at times were quite large,

00:20:06.440 | and you walk into the lab

00:20:07.440 | and there are a lot of different things going on,

00:20:08.960 | one of the things that you learn how to do

00:20:10.660 | if you're going to get good at your craft

00:20:13.120 | is to not pay attention to what's going on

00:20:15.740 | with everyone crowded around a computer

00:20:17.640 | looking at like who's winning at the World Cup.

00:20:19.640 | I'm not trying to insult soccer players here.

00:20:21.200 | I enjoy soccer, both playing it and observing it,

00:20:23.640 | but one has to sort of scruff themselves a little bit

00:20:28.080 | in trying to limit their attention

00:20:30.000 | to a number of different things in the environment

00:20:32.580 | and really go from task A to task B

00:20:34.920 | in a really dedicated way.

00:20:36.720 | Short lists benefit certain people.

00:20:38.780 | I know a lot of people are list makers out there.

00:20:40.520 | They like to put two or three things

00:20:42.380 | or maybe 20 things that they're going to accomplish each day.

00:20:45.460 | One of the best tools that I ever learned

00:20:47.400 | both for sake of task switching,

00:20:49.280 | but also for sake of just getting things done

00:20:52.060 | on a consistent basis.

00:20:53.120 | I picked up while I was a master's student at Berkeley,

00:20:55.420 | a very accomplished professor at that time,

00:20:58.240 | told me that he writes down every day

00:21:00.080 | three things that he's going to accomplish

00:21:01.860 | and only three things, never more than three.

00:21:04.800 | Now, he also included other activities.

00:21:06.840 | In fact, he was quite active in his physical life.

00:21:09.680 | So he rode his bike to campus.

00:21:11.900 | He also was a runner.

00:21:13.120 | He also went to the gym.

00:21:14.180 | He did not include those on his list of three things,

00:21:16.140 | but he would write down no more than three critical things

00:21:19.720 | to do each day.

00:21:20.560 | So he had three critical tasks.

00:21:22.960 | So I've employed that method as well.

00:21:24.980 | I'll write down one, sometimes two, most often three,

00:21:28.220 | but if I can, just one or two tasks

00:21:30.840 | that I need to complete each day.

00:21:32.480 | And everything else is considered part of the,

00:21:34.820 | let's just say, automaticity function of my day.

00:21:37.900 | Things that I already know how to do

00:21:39.140 | that don't require a ton of cognitive focus,

00:21:41.380 | but I limit the things that require a lot of cognitive focus

00:21:44.040 | to three things per day.

00:21:45.220 | However, those three things per day

00:21:46.620 | can take up many, many hours each,

00:21:48.460 | and certainly on the whole.

00:21:49.660 | Okay, now there are additional things that one can do

00:21:52.020 | to improve your ability to task switch.

00:21:53.580 | And one of the things that I found particularly beneficial

00:21:56.220 | is not a meditation, but rather is a perceptual exercise.

00:22:00.020 | And this is a perceptual exercise that I learned about

00:22:02.900 | when I was a graduate student,

00:22:04.380 | but in a totally different context.

00:22:05.820 | And it has to do with the way that your visual system

00:22:08.700 | and the parts of your brain that parse time

00:22:12.320 | are related to one another and influence one another.

00:22:14.860 | Now, the reason this tool makes sense

00:22:16.220 | for improving your ability to task switch

00:22:18.540 | is because it turns out that where you focus

00:22:21.080 | your visual attention strongly influences the way

00:22:24.060 | that your brain parses time.

00:22:27.260 | So I'll describe the tool first,

00:22:28.860 | and then I'll get a little bit

00:22:29.680 | into the underlying mechanisms.

00:22:30.980 | But again, I'll get deep into the underlying mechanisms

00:22:34.360 | as well as the tool, as well as additional tools

00:22:36.380 | in a future episode about task switching

00:22:38.180 | on the Huberman Lab Podcast.

00:22:40.100 | So if you were to, for instance, close your eyes

00:22:45.100 | and not look at anything in your external environment,

00:22:48.960 | and just concentrate, for instance, on your breathing

00:22:51.380 | or the feeling on the surface of your skin.

00:22:53.300 | I know this is starting to sound like meditation,

00:22:55.040 | but trust me, it's not meditation.

00:22:56.780 | Your perception of time,

00:22:59.220 | that is how finally you are slicing time,

00:23:02.220 | would be distinctly different

00:23:04.300 | than if you were to open your eyes

00:23:06.500 | and focus on a faraway location, say way off in the horizon,

00:23:09.960 | and not focus on your bodily sensations.

00:23:14.480 | Similarly, if you were to focus your attention

00:23:17.660 | on some intermediate location,

00:23:19.700 | maybe let's say 20 feet away,

00:23:22.380 | and simultaneously focus on your internal bodily sensations

00:23:27.420 | or the surface of your skin, your perception of time,

00:23:31.180 | how quickly time was passing, would also be different

00:23:35.140 | than if you closed your eyes

00:23:36.880 | or if you were looking at some distant location.

00:23:39.000 | So the perceptual tool for task switching

00:23:41.740 | is a very simple one.

00:23:42.660 | And it's one that, frankly, I do every morning

00:23:44.540 | and have for many years now, and at least for me,

00:23:47.280 | has really enhanced my ability to task switch.

00:23:49.900 | And that is to just take a couple of minutes,

00:23:52.260 | and this really only takes about two or three minutes.

00:23:54.700 | And typically what I will do is I'll start

00:23:56.620 | by closing my eyes.

00:23:58.180 | Oh, I should mention, I typically do this

00:23:59.660 | in an environment where ideally I can see off

00:24:02.220 | into the distance, perhaps from a balcony,

00:24:04.620 | if I'm at an apartment or a house, ideally outdoors.

00:24:08.340 | But if I'm indoors, I'll still do this.

00:24:09.880 | I'll just look as far off into the distance as I can

00:24:12.980 | when that step is required.

00:24:15.020 | So, but I start off by closing my eyes

00:24:17.060 | and essentially not looking at anything,

00:24:18.980 | but directing my brain's focus

00:24:20.900 | to either the surface of my body,

00:24:22.260 | just what it feels like, what it's in contact with

00:24:24.300 | or not in contact with, maybe my breathing.

00:24:26.860 | Then I'll open my eyes and I will focus on some location

00:24:29.980 | on my body, but my bodily surface,

00:24:31.720 | like my hand at some distance,

00:24:34.080 | and I'll focus my attention there,

00:24:36.220 | maybe for just five to 15 seconds.

00:24:38.720 | I should mention that the first station, as I call them,

00:24:41.700 | where my eyes were closed

00:24:42.700 | and I was focusing on my bodily sensations,

00:24:44.180 | I also just do that for about five to 15 seconds,

00:24:46.300 | and I don't count specifically.

00:24:47.980 | I'm just kind of roughly five to 15 seconds.

00:24:51.900 | Okay, so second station,

00:24:52.860 | you're looking at the surface of your hand,

00:24:55.260 | and if you like, you can also concentrate on your breathing,

00:24:58.380 | but typically people will just focus

00:24:59.840 | on some specific location on their hand.

00:25:02.320 | Then I'll typically lower my hand,

00:25:04.060 | then I'll look off into the distance,

00:25:05.660 | maybe five to 10 feet, doesn't really matter,

00:25:07.940 | focus my visual attention there,

00:25:09.660 | try and hold that focus for five to 15 seconds.

00:25:11.980 | Then I'll look further off in the distance,

00:25:14.460 | maybe further still off into the distance.

00:25:17.940 | Ultimately, what I try and do is look at a location

00:25:19.880 | as far off into the distance, excuse me, as I possibly can,

00:25:24.880 | and I'm also trying to pay attention

00:25:27.000 | to my breathing at the same time,

00:25:28.400 | just as a way of calibrating my location

00:25:31.200 | to the location that I'm looking at and how great that is.

00:25:34.840 | Then typically I'll close my eyes and return my attention

00:25:37.240 | to my immediate environment

00:25:38.840 | and my breathing just in the location I'm in.

00:25:41.340 | Okay, so the entire thing only takes about two minutes.

00:25:44.120 | Again, starting with eyes closed,

00:25:46.260 | focusing on self, five to 15 seconds,

00:25:48.160 | then eyes open, focusing on surface of one's body,

00:25:51.760 | that is focusing one's visual attention,

00:25:53.260 | five to 15 seconds, maybe 10 feet away,

00:25:55.960 | then maybe 50 feet away.

00:25:58.640 | If you're in the metric system, okay, meters, folks,

00:26:00.900 | works just as well.

00:26:01.800 | These distances do not have to be precise.

00:26:04.240 | And then off to the horizon

00:26:06.520 | and then back to one's immediate location

00:26:08.760 | by closing one's eyes.

00:26:10.000 | Now, what is happening

00:26:11.960 | when one does this perceptual exercise?

00:26:13.960 | And again, it's a perceptual exercise,

00:26:15.640 | it's a visual perceptual exercise.

00:26:17.880 | Well, what's happening is you are shifting

00:26:21.040 | your visual focus, obviously,

00:26:23.280 | but you're also shifting the way in which you find slice

00:26:27.440 | or thick slice time.

00:26:29.720 | Now, your ability to recognize consciously

00:26:31.920 | whether or not you're thin slicing or thick slicing time

00:26:34.480 | is much harder to get a grasp of

00:26:37.940 | than it is to get a grasp of whether or not

00:26:39.560 | you're looking at your hand or often in the distance.

00:26:41.640 | That's kind of obvious.

00:26:42.800 | But what we know for sure is that as you shift your attention

00:26:45.160 | from your immediate environment

00:26:46.280 | out to different designated locations in your environment

00:26:49.320 | and your time perception shifts accordingly,

00:26:52.440 | you're essentially training your brain

00:26:54.080 | to shift visual focus

00:26:55.680 | and the way in which you process in the time domain.

00:26:58.840 | And this is important in the context of task switching

00:27:01.420 | because so much of task switching

00:27:03.840 | is not just to understand, okay,

00:27:06.920 | I'm going from reading to running

00:27:09.120 | or from running to reading

00:27:11.680 | and the different types of operations that are required

00:27:13.920 | in one case versus the other,

00:27:16.000 | but also a shift in the neural circuits

00:27:19.640 | that underlie your perception of time.

00:27:22.200 | And again, this is a topic that deserves

00:27:23.880 | a much more elaborate discussion,

00:27:26.120 | but so much of our ability to execute a task

00:27:30.900 | with high proficiency has to do with getting our thinking

00:27:34.040 | and our actions into the correct time domain.

00:27:38.020 | Now, when I say time domain,

00:27:39.120 | I know a number of people can get confused

00:27:41.160 | because time is time, right?

00:27:42.600 | People think, what do you mean by time domain?

00:27:44.800 | Space domain makes sense,

00:27:46.280 | here I'm not talking about outer space,

00:27:47.680 | whether or not you're looking in one location or another,

00:27:50.940 | close to your body or far away from your body

00:27:52.720 | or different domains of space,

00:27:55.720 | but the time domain is a little trickier

00:27:57.880 | for most people to understand.

00:27:58.800 | So just think of it this way,

00:28:00.200 | when you see a slow motion movie,

00:28:02.800 | what you're seeing is a movie

00:28:04.080 | that was shot at a high frame rate, many frames per second.

00:28:08.000 | Okay, the typical smartphone shoots movies

00:28:09.880 | at about 60 frames per second,

00:28:11.540 | some older ones, 30 frames per second,

00:28:13.200 | the slow-mo function on your smartphone

00:28:17.440 | is actually a high frame rate function.

00:28:20.800 | You took the same movie,

00:28:22.600 | but you took it at higher frame rate,

00:28:24.420 | so you got a lot more images,

00:28:26.360 | therefore you can generate slow motion.

00:28:28.560 | So with your visual system,

00:28:29.680 | when you focus very close in to your body

00:28:32.360 | or you're focused on bodily sensations

00:28:34.420 | in your immediate environment,

00:28:35.920 | you are fine slicing in the time domain more so

00:28:41.140 | than when you are looking further off in the distance.

00:28:44.560 | Similarly, when you engage in one type of task,

00:28:46.740 | like a board meeting or a Zoom meeting

00:28:48.480 | or a conversation with friends,

00:28:50.400 | you are in a very different set of neural circuit functions

00:28:54.300 | than when you sit down to read or learn math or lift weights

00:28:58.300 | or go to therapy or go for a walk with your dog,

00:29:02.220 | for instance.

00:29:03.500 | Now, it should be clear why

00:29:04.700 | when you move from task A to task B,

00:29:07.100 | you want to A, introduce a transition period,

00:29:11.160 | can be very brief.

00:29:12.080 | Maybe you don't even have time

00:29:13.240 | for the two-minute transition period.

00:29:14.720 | You just say, okay, I'm in a transition period

00:29:16.580 | between task A and task B.

00:29:17.780 | I'm moving from this thing to that thing.

00:29:19.540 | I just need like 10 seconds.

00:29:21.360 | I'm going to recognize, I'm going to count down 10 to one

00:29:24.320 | or one up to 10, doesn't matter.

00:29:26.520 | This is transition time,

00:29:27.760 | but this is not a time to look at my phone

00:29:31.280 | or to be in lots of different time domains.

00:29:33.640 | Now, you might say,

00:29:35.520 | well, does that mean I shouldn't look at the horizon

00:29:38.020 | while I'm walking from my meeting back to my desk?

00:29:40.220 | No, no, no, no.

00:29:41.500 | That's not the way that your brain works.

00:29:42.860 | It doesn't anchor to things

00:29:44.460 | that just happen to be in your environment

00:29:45.920 | unless they're of particular interest.

00:29:47.560 | What I'm saying is set a transition period between tasks,

00:29:50.620 | ideally two, maybe as long as 10 minutes.

00:29:53.840 | I'm also saying that when you switch between tasks

00:29:58.140 | or when you initiate your first major task of the day,

00:30:00.800 | please expect, do expect a period in which it's hard

00:30:05.800 | to get into the groove, so to speak.

00:30:08.480 | And in addition to that,

00:30:10.980 | I recommend having some sort of practice.

00:30:12.900 | And I described the practice that I've used

00:30:14.600 | for some period of time now,

00:30:16.260 | at least for me to great success,

00:30:18.520 | where you are deliberately shifting your visual attention

00:30:21.560 | between different locations close to you and far away.

00:30:24.160 | And you're doing that as a perceptual practice.

00:30:26.760 | Again, the whole thing only takes about two minutes,

00:30:28.940 | maybe three minutes.

00:30:30.300 | And you don't even need to do it every day.

00:30:31.840 | I happen to do it every day,

00:30:32.820 | but I miss the occasional day here and there.

00:30:34.660 | And even if you were to do this perceptual practice

00:30:37.260 | once a week or three times a week,

00:30:41.000 | I'm certain that you'll benefit

00:30:42.040 | because in doing that perceptual practice,

00:30:43.960 | there's also an immediate recognition

00:30:46.380 | of the sorts of shifts that your brain is required

00:30:48.380 | to engage in anytime you move from task A to task B

00:30:51.320 | or from task B to task C.

00:30:53.120 | And you start to see and feel, literally see and feel,

00:30:58.380 | the way that that transition occurs

00:31:00.720 | and that it takes a little bit of time,

00:31:02.160 | but that you can accelerate that transition

00:31:04.360 | if you understand that, oh, when I'm looking here

00:31:06.900 | and engaging in this type of behavior or sets of tasks,

00:31:10.860 | and then I'm now going to be expected to do another task

00:31:13.900 | in a completely different type of environment,

00:31:16.640 | that the brain is going to be required

00:31:19.100 | to shift over the neural circuits that are active

00:31:21.280 | and less active in order to do that,

00:31:23.340 | but that you can accelerate that process by practicing it

00:31:26.240 | using that perceptual tool that I described.

00:31:28.720 | So there I covered some specific tools

00:31:30.340 | that one can use to enhance one's ability to task switch.

00:31:33.460 | Touching on a bit of the underlying neurobiology

00:31:35.660 | and why transition periods are useful if not required.

00:31:39.580 | If you think about there's always a transition period

00:31:41.920 | when task switching,

00:31:42.900 | but here you're taking conscious control

00:31:44.400 | over that transition period.

00:31:45.960 | There are additional tools

00:31:47.460 | for enhancing one's ability to task switch.

00:31:49.600 | They tend to be somewhat specific

00:31:52.020 | for the certain kinds of cognitive or physical tasks

00:31:55.440 | that one needs to do.

00:31:56.900 | The example of chess boxing that I gave earlier,

00:31:59.100 | great example of task switching

00:32:00.580 | at its extreme terrible example of a practice,

00:32:03.020 | space-time bridging, very safe.

00:32:04.940 | I can't think of any way in which it might be dangerous,

00:32:07.060 | although please don't do it while driving

00:32:08.700 | or while operating in any other machinery,

00:32:11.300 | but by all accounts, very safe, zero cost.

00:32:14.140 | And we talked about some of the other tools

00:32:15.360 | for task switching as well.

00:32:17.380 | Thank you for joining for the beginning

00:32:18.940 | of this Ask Me Anything episode.

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00:32:24.260 | of these Ask Me Anything sessions,

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00:33:41.700 | So this is a terrific way that they're going to amplify

00:33:44.300 | whatever funds come in through the premium channel

00:33:46.260 | to further support research for science

00:33:48.340 | and science related tools for mental health,

00:33:50.100 | physical health, and performance.

00:33:51.620 | If you'd like to sign up

00:33:52.460 | for the Huberman Lab premium channel,

00:33:54.220 | again, there's a cost of $10 per month,

00:33:56.300 | or you can pay $100 upfront for the entire year.

00:33:59.060 | That will give you access to all the AMAs.

00:34:01.420 | You can ask questions and get answers to your questions,

00:34:04.300 | and you'll, of course, get answers to all the questions

00:34:06.900 | that other people ask as well.

00:34:08.260 | There will also be some premium content,

00:34:10.200 | such as transcripts of the AMAs

00:34:12.020 | and various transcripts and protocols

00:34:13.920 | of Huberman Lab Podcast episodes not found elsewhere.

00:34:17.140 | And again, you'll be supporting research

00:34:19.460 | for mental health, physical health, and performance.

00:34:21.820 | You can sign up for the premium channel

00:34:23.220 | by going to HubermanLab.com/premium.

00:34:25.900 | Again, that's HubermanLab.com/premium.

00:34:28.800 | And as always, thank you for your interest in science.

00:34:31.660 | (upbeat music)

00:34:34.240 | (upbeat music)

AMA #11: Improve Task Switching & Productivity and Reduce Brain Fog

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