Back to the on-screen lesson ·
Why doing two things at once is usually switching, and how a later list and fixed check times keep one task whole.
Paper packet. Every task here also exists on screen, where it is checked automatically; answers written on paper are not assessed by Nydus. When you are back at a device, enter your answers there.
You will choose one task, park new jobs on a later list, set message checks at the ends of work blocks, and tell what must be dealt with now from what can wait.
The last lesson cleared the room. This one deals with the demand that clearing cannot remove: another job of your own, or a message that wants an answer. As before, this is everyday practice with invented scenes. It is not an assessment and not a treatment, a clinician's plan for you comes before anything here, and anything new about your attention is theirs to hear about.
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Switch | Leaving one job for another. Coming back is a second switch. |
| Restart | The work of finding your place and picking a job up again after a switch. |
| Single-tasking | Choosing one job and staying with it until it, or a planned chunk of it, is done. |
| Later list | A sheet beside you where a new job is parked in a few words while you carry on. |
| Message check | A time fixed in advance, at the end of a work block, when messages are read. |
Two small aids make one task at a time possible without relying on resolve.
The later list is a sheet beside you with one heading: later. When another job arrives in your head — the laundry, a call to make — it goes on the list in a few words, and you go back to the task. The job is not forgotten; it is parked.
Fixed check times decide in advance when messages get looked at: at the end of each work block, not whenever the phone lights up. Write them at the top of the page — check at 10:30, 11:00 — so the decision is made once, on paper.
For most everyday jobs that need thought — a form, a bill, a recipe — people do not really do two at once. They switch: a little of one, then a little of the other. Every switch has a cost. You let go of where you were, pick up the other job, and later have to find your place again.
Single-tasking means choosing one job, finishing it or a planned chunk of it, and only then turning to the next. Other jobs are not ignored. They wait on the later list, and messages wait for their check time.
There is one exception, and it matters: safety. A smoke alarm, a child in danger or a pan boiling over is dealt with at once. Then you mark your place and come back.
Another way: picture
Draw two strips for the same morning. On the first, a bill and the laundry alternate in thin stripes, with a small gray gap at every change of color: the restarts. On the second, the bill is one solid block and the laundry another. Same work, one gap.
Rubinstein, Meyer and Evans (2001) had people switch between tasks such as sorting shapes and solving sums. Every switch cost time, and the cost was larger when the tasks were more complex or less familiar. A later review of many experiments (Monsell, 2003) found that some cost remains even when people know a switch is coming and get ready for it.
Each cost is small. A morning of them is not, and the restarts are also where slips creep in: a line skipped, a figure copied twice. The ACRM review of rehabilitation evidence (Cicerone and colleagues, 2019) pairs attention practice with strategies like this one, which a person chooses, uses and checks for themselves.
This lesson counts switches, not time, because the count is something you can see on paper. A reply in the middle of a form is two switches: away from the form and back to it. Answer five emails that way and the form has ten restarts. Park the five on the later list and answer them after the form, and the afternoon has one change of job.
When a switch truly cannot be avoided, make it cheap: mark your place with a tick or a sticky note and say the next step aloud before you turn away.
Most US states let drivers renew a license online, often in a short sequence of screens that ends with a confirmation page, and the American Psychological Association's summary of the switching research notes that shifting between tasks can cost as much as 40 percent of someone's productive time.
Picture Bea, a fictional grandmother, renewing her license while a family group chat plans a birthday. On Monday she answers each message as it lands: four replies, so 4 × 2 = 8 switches, and she has to redo one screen after it times out. On Tuesday she tries the plan from this lesson for a different form: phone silent in the kitchen, a later list beside the laptop with reply re cake on it, and one message check after the confirmation page. One switch. The chat lost nothing; it simply waited twenty minutes.
"I'll fill the loading screens with a quick reply." It feels like getting more done. The gaps are short, the reply needs its own setting up, and each return brings a restart.
"Single-tasking means ignoring everything." It does not. The other jobs are on the list and the messages have their times. They are waiting, not abandoned.
"Nothing can interrupt me." Safety always can. The skill is telling must be now from can be parked.
Choose the one task.
Task: pay the gas bill, first screen to confirmation.
Naming the task says what counts as finished.
Park the other job on the later list.
Later list: fold laundry.
The laundry is safe on paper, so it stops pulling while she pays.
Fix when messages will be read.
Check: after the confirmation page.
The decision is made once, before the start, not each time the phone lights up.
Do the task in one piece, then the next.
Bill paid (1 switch) → laundry folded.
One change of job instead of several restarts in the middle.
Write out the mixed afternoon.
Form → text → form → email → form → text → form
Writing the order down makes each switch visible.
Count the switches in it.
3 replies × 2 = 6 switches
Each reply is two switches: away and back.
Write out the one-task afternoon.
Form (finished) → text, email, text
The replies are grouped after the form, at the message check.
Count again and compare.
Mixed: 6 switches. One task: 1 switch.
The same replies were sent; only the restarts in the form went.
Place the first check.
Check 1: minute 25.
Messages wait for the end of the first block.
Place the second check.
Check 2: 25 + 25 = minute 50.
Each check is one block after the last.
A thought about the dry cleaning arrives at minute 12. What happens to it?
A fictional morning. Bea has to renew her driver's license online, and her sister keeps texting about Sunday lunch. Which plan keeps the renewal as one task?
A fictional hour. Before starting on her budget, Nia parks 2 jobs on her later list. While she works, 4 more jobs come to mind and each goes on the list. She works in blocks of 23 minutes and checks messages at the end of each. Complete her worked plan.
Name the one task at the top of the page.
Task: this month's budget.
Everything else on the page is measured against this one job.
Count what is on the later list by the end of the hour.
Later list: 2 parked before + 4 during = a
Every job that arrived was written down rather than done, so none of them broke into the budget.
Set the first message check at the end of the first block.
Check 1: minute 23
Messages wait for the end of a block, not the middle of one.
Set the second check one block later.
Check 2: minute c
Fixed in advance, the check times mean the phone never decides when the budget stops.
A fictional plan. Luis works on his tax papers in blocks of 27 minutes and reads messages only at the end of each block. Fill in the minute (counted from the start) of each of his first three checks.
| Minute from the start | |
|---|---|
| Check 1 | |
| Check 2 | |
| Check 3 |
A fictional afternoon. While filling in a rebate form, Theo stops 3 times to answer an email and then goes back to the form. How many switches does the afternoon hold? (If he had parked the emails and answered them after the form, there would have been 1.)
Switches in Theo's afternoon: a
A fictional morning. You have a three-section jury questionnaire to fill in, and two messages have just arrived. Finish the form and reply to both messages, without ever breaking off the form to reply.
This task has no paper form; do it on a device.
A fictional afternoon working from home on a spreadsheet for a neighborhood association. Four things happen. For each, write **now** (deal with it at once) or **later list** (write it down and carry on).
| When | |
|---|---|
| Smoke alarm goes off | |
| Remember to buy printer paper | |
| Pot boiling over | |
| Email about next month's meeting |
Lesson test: one question per skill, one attempt each, no hints. Your answers are checked when you submit.
A fictional evening. Carmen needs to pay her car insurance online before it lapses, and her phone keeps buzzing with a group chat. Build her one-task plan, one decision to a row.
| Decision | |
|---|---|
| The one task | |
| Where the phone goes | |
| A new thought mid-task | |
| When messages are read |
Write later at the top of a scrap of paper and put it where you work. From memory, say why a reply in the middle of a task is two switches, and which things never go on the later list. Next: a search path. This is optional practice at home, not treatment and not a test of attention. If anything about your attention, energy or eyesight is new or changing, tell your own clinician. Stopping is always allowed: close the page, and the lesson reopens where you left it.
12. Your turn: Sam works in blocks of 25 minutes and reads messages after each, step 3
Later list: pick up dry cleaning. Work carries on to minute 25.
A new job is parked in a few words, not done in the middle of a block.