I was first afraid of multitasking - how do people juggle so many things at once? my brain can't handle focusing on more than one or two things at a time at most. And no, this isn't a trick to get you to be able to do your laundry while scrolling through tiktok and no, this isn't going to affect your attention span (at least, i hope not). And I want to preface this by saying I am not an EXPERT at multitasking, and i am not suggesting you to be able to drive while doing your homework - please do not take this as advice to do anything potentially harmful or endangering to you or others. this is just a guide on how i personally overcame the fear of being able to multitask, and sort of implemented this into my everyday life without even purposefully or consciously doing so.

i value time management heavily, as i want to be able to spend more time and effort on doing the things i want to do and less on the things that i HAVE to do (boooo adult responsibilities) and I hope that this blog post will not only serve as a helpful guide to you to get started on your journey to multitask better, but also a reflection for myself on how i got started and maybe even discover some secret new methods or tricks to help me improve on my multitasking capabilities. if i do find the key to all this, i will definitely provide an update to this post haha.

the first key thing is actually having the energy capable to multitask. if i am low on sleep or haven't eaten yet, my mind will zone out a lot. i won't be consciously thinking about "sleep, i need sleep. food, i need food." but it'll definitely weigh down on how much "brain power" i can use. in these sleep-deprived or hungry states, and even non-physiological factors like stress from thinking about something i have to deal with, whatever the case is on the state of mind that is "noise", i find myself either distracted often or having to lock back in and say "what did i just do? where did i leave off?" definitely make sure you are in the right state of mind or you may find yourself losing focus, or zombie-minded and having to back pedal on your thoughts or progress.

with that out of the way, i want to share an anecdote on where i actually found multitasking to not only serve a purpose practically, but in all honesty one of my "proudest moments" of realization that wow, maybe i can multitask. it all started when i got into league of legends. no seriously. hear me out. who knew game theory and practice could have real-life applications?

no, you do not need to play league of legends to multitask better but i'll explain this the best i could to all my non-moba gamers out there. essentially, in a normal standard game environment of league (short for league of legends), there is a “jungler” role. It is one of the five roles in a 5 versus 5 multiplayer game. I am not a high ranking player, but the basic premise or fundamental of this role, in order to maximize your role’s impact in the game, is to have effective clearing. This comes in many elements to consider - whether that would be auto-attack timing, best pathing routes, aoe skills or priority selection on which monster you will target first - it all matters. Why? You want to “clear” your route the quickest and most efficient way before the other team’s jungler. This will open a PLETHORA of options you can do. Once you are ahead on gold/xp than the other jungler, you have a better chance at controlling the map. And with controlling the map, you have a better chance at controlling the outcome of the game. With your “jungle camps” cleared and out of the way, as they are put on timers before they spawn back in again, 1-- it give you more time to help your teammates, who will be separated in different lanes. 2-- it gives you time to get other objectives (for example the scuttle, which rewards players upon slaying them with gold, xp, and vision for map control). 3-- you can invade the other side of the map and take the other jungler’s camps, essentially taking away the opportunity of catching up for them. There are so many things you can do to shift the game to your favor. Of course, there are so many elements designed in the game to create variable competition that can sway both ways to make things entertaining and fun, but the theory applies.

Now, for me, i practiced this game after game, champion after champion (who have different abilities), and not all games go the same way, but the fundamental of this concept is that i was able to start dumbing down these tasks, and eventually i ran these things on autopilot. If i saw a scenario unfold, i immediately knew what to do next to make sure we were at better odds. At first, inexperience led me to being confused and unsure of what to do. That wasted time, and thus that made me unfavourable at being able to win. But the more i played, i knew exactly what to do to start, i knew exactly what measures to take if an off-balance event happened in the game, and that equipped me with a better chance at winning because i was more aware.

Now, i took this same concept and applied it to my work at KGS Research when I was just an intern at my project management role. Every day, i was tasked with things i had to set up. I’m not able to disclose the details of exactly what i had to do, but at the end of all of it, i noticed patterns. I noticed that there were redundancies and yes, although each set up had its own unique specification to it, a lot of it clicked in my head where i always had a certain route to “clear”. If i clear things quick while being accurate, then i’ll have more time to learn in my role, because after my initial setups in the beginning, we had to monitor metrics. For a lot of it, i was able to not only autopilot the redundant aspects of the setups, but also if a unique spec had to be considered, i knew exactly what to do, just like in league. I wasn’t just left clueless or wasting time wondering what i had to do next.

Now, with this, not only did it give me more time to learn and develop other aspects in my position, i was also able to free up my “brain capacity”. That’s where the multitasking came in. while my eyes and hands were occupied on the screen, i could start pre-moving. I could think ahead on not only my next steps, but also think about other considerations, whatever was on my mind at the time. And if something was processing, i could switch over and do something else. Eventually, that trickled into the monitoring metrics part of my role. Because i started to see patterns in this task here, i was able to set an internal timer. This one is really weird to explain, as i’m not sure exactly how this came to be, but i was able to not only evaluate how long something would expect to take once i take a scan at it, but i also didn’t even need to set an actual timer. It just started to go off feel everytime. Sometimes i would be a little early, sometimes i would be spot on, but at the end of all of it, the result was that i was able to free up my mental capacity to focus on another task while i had this “timer” running in the back of my head. No, i dont just think “i’ll check back in 5 minutes” and look at the clock.

Genuinely, this one kind of scares me because i just developed a knack for getting that timing right. I joke about this sometimes, but i would say “holy i am so good at my job” when something like that just goes right. It feels amazing that things just fall into place perfectly. Things just align effortlessly. It took time for me to garner that experience to get to that level, but it suddenly just came about. I don’t know if this is just a regular phenomenon that other people face, or if it’s just something that my job helped me develop, but i hope that with whatever you are doing, you gain that same experience and be able to master multitasking. I guess a part of it is pattern recognition, but the biggest thing is being able to somehow partition your brain capacity so that you can process multiple things simultaneously… it’s a weird concept but i like to think of it as ANYONE can do this in their position. I’m not someone with a natural talent for multitasking, and i’m not someone that somehow found a trick to “increase my brain capacity past my limits” to incorporate more thinking power into other things. This of course doesn’t apply to everything and everyone depending on their situation, and i for one do not want my surgeon to be playing cookie clicker while performing a heart transplant, but finding ways to automate yourself on the things you HAVE to do and being able to free up the things that you WANT to do, it’s one of the reasons why i’m always making a conscious effort to break things down to digestible pieces for my brain to process, clump things together, prioritize certain ways i do things so i can knock things off in one go and not having to revisit it again. It’s something that i hope that i can do in anything i set out to do, and i hope you are able to take away and consider some neat tricks for yourself and become a multitasking machine.