Rotational Monotasking

The Subconscious Collaborator

You can’t multitask. But your subconscious can.

The literature against multitasking is vast. The human brain, for example, only possesses one language processor.

But how many of us have received a brilliant idea while performing a completely unrelated activity?

Harness it. Treat your subconscious as a collaborator: pass it work, receive it back.

Conscious & Subconscious

One’s psychological resources do not extend over the horizon, infinitely in all directions. Sometimes you can’t concentrate enough to read a single additional email. But in these moments of email exhaustion, you could compose a slide deck. (Or at least cook dinner.)

Take my writing process:

1. Spew

2. Nugget

3. Outline

4. Polish

Spewing more than one topic back-to-back forces my eyes to cross and my mouth to fill with cotton. Spewing on a topic, then immediately nuggeting it, prompts an outsized interest in the activities outside my window. But I can spew topic A, then nugget topic B, outline C, and polish D, no sweat.

My calendar becomes a beautiful spiral, like strands of A, T, C, and G in double-helixed DNA.

The Spiral

Plenty of games contain this sort of interlocking loop. When the same shape shows up across domains, the underlying move tends to transfer. Weightlifting benefits from a rotation of muscle groups. A football play contains individual loops per player, each intersecting and overlapping. Recognizing the shape enables you to take the tactics from one game to the next.

Why not relate to your mind in this way?

The Subconscious Collaborator

In college, I practiced the skill of passing information to my subconscious. “What is six times seven?” could be performed consciously (visually) or via telling oneself, “Come back to me when you know six times seven.”

I call this process rotational monotasking, since you’re not performing two tasks at once. Your single activity is passing and receiving. (I don’t think of these as two activities, just as I don’t think of listening and talking as different activities, but as sub-parts of “conversing.”)

Years later, friends would introduce me to the bomb defusal game Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes. In this game, the defuser must pass information about the bomb to specialized experts, who perform their mini-tasks, then pass information back to the defuser. By no coincidence, I performed naturally as a defuser, thanks to it mimicking the same process: pass and receive.

In play: I tell someone the colors of horizontal wires. They tell me they need the serial number. I say “one moment” and circle back. We pass information, ignoring the irrelevancies, and pulling the right answer when ready for it. The team works faster when everyone has a productive activity. Your job as defuser: ensure everyone else always has a task.

In what other areas does one perform this pass and receive?

• As a leader/delegator. (“Tell them the end state and the why; let them invent the how.”)

• With oneself, to improve one’s skill at a topic without dedicating conscious resources. (“Brainstorm fun ideas for my blog title” → you’ll start to notice them while grocery shopping.)

• When one has hit a wall. (“I don’t know what else to do here. Give me the next move when you know it.”)

Some people have developed impressive loops. Can you feel the difference between 41°F and 41.5°F? Many river guides can. Can you tell yourself to wake at 6 a.m. and do it? You can learn it.

Rotation buys you the ability to focus on the present without losing that other idea.

When you pass a topic and return to it:

1. You’re newly rested, so you see it with fresh eyes and enthusiasm

2. You’re in a new circumstance, so may have new ideas based on the new context

3. You can spend the intervening time on other activities (rather than banging your head against the wall)

4. Your subconscious has time to work on it (ah, the glory of the shower thought!)

When you have an idea, you needn’t tackle it immediately. With infinite seconds between now and a deadline, what are the odds that now is the right time to think on it? Process creates product. Improved process → improved product.

This very post: spewed Wednesday, outlined Thursday, and polished Friday for your enjoyment.