#106: Multitasking Myths, Focus & Real-World Brain Health - Therese Huston, PhD

0:00The long-term consequences, people who multitask a lot have a harder time holding things in working memory. Brain activity goes down by on average 37%. Blood pressure goes up, heart rate goes up. It's harder for you to hold on to information, which means you're having to work harder so you're more stressed. One of the strategies that was a game changer for me was to learn about binaural beats. And what's going to happen is you're going to hear two tones simultaneously in your two ears. Your brain will do a subtraction, so you only hear one sound. Scientists call it entrainment. Certain neurons will begin to fire in synchrony with whatever that wavelength is.

0:36And so 40 hertz for focus, that seems to be the brain waves that are associated with deep focus. BDNF stands for brain-derived neurotropic factor. It's like miracle grow for the brain. In the hippocampus, it can actually lead to neurogenesis, new neurons. You're someone who's looking to improve your memory. You want to do aerobic exercise at least twice a week for about 40 minutes, about 50 to 70 percent of your maximum heart rate. The research was at a point where we could really help everyday people.

1:09Welcome to the FitMind podcast, where we bridge the world of science and contemplative practice. Today, I'm joined by Dr. Therese Houston, a cognitive scientist and the author of Sharp, Simple Strategies to Boost Your Brainpower at Any Age. In this episode, we dive into the myth of multitasking, practical neuroscience for focus, and simple techniques you can use right away to lower stress, strengthen attention, and spark new brain growth. It's a really grounded, science-backed conversation full of takeaways you can apply today. Without further ado, I give you Dr. Therese Houston. Therese, welcome to the podcast.

1:51Thank you so much, Josh. It's such an honor to be here. It's a pleasure to have you. To start with, I'd love to hear a little bit about your journey. What was it that drew you into the world of academic cognitive neuroscience for a broader audience? Well, in some ways, I've wanted to write this book for about 30 years. When I was in graduate school, I was doing a cognitive science, cognitive psychology PhD, and I had to pick a thesis topic. And after taking this fabulous course in neuroscience, a seminar in neuroscience, I went into my PhD advisor and it was an unscheduled meeting. And I went in, I said, John, I figured out what I want to do my dissertation research on.

2:37And he doesn't even look away from his computer. He's just typing and he's like, okay. And I said, I want to make neuroscience useful to people. And at this point, he finally pivots and looks at me and he says, you mean for patients, right? And I said, no, no, no, no, for everyday people. And then his eyes just slide back to his computer and he said, it's too soon, you know, wait a decade. So this was in the early 90s. And sure enough, you know, neuroscience was just in terms of at least the research was in the early stages of just making sure that the imaging technology was safe and how to do it properly.

3:18Anyway, it took until the early 2020s before I was satisfied that the research was at a point where we could really help everyday people. Neuroscience had been helping patients for decades, but in terms of really helping someone in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, live a better daily life, what would be practices that you could incorporate. Neuroscience was finally shedding a light on some things that practitioners and meditation had an intuition about for a long time, or people who did exercise who were trainers had intuitions about. Now neuroscience was confirming or clarifying what the best practices were in terms of brain health.

3:56And so I'm excited to be taking the juiciest bits of that information and turning it into a manual, kind of a manual for the brain so that you can be healthy into your 60s, 70s, 80s, and make the most of your brain at any age. So there's like a central theme, I guess, in your work that seems to be tackling this kind of like wellness, overwhelm, this sheer volume of advice that's available. And I find it can sometimes become sort of a stress itself. How do you approach like curating the science backed strategies that are simple to fit into our everyday lives? it really does capture it right wellness overwhelm for those of us who love podcasts like yours we you know I think I subscribe to at least six wellness podcasts at the moment and then there are more that I'm trying to decide whether or not to subscribe to and you know just trying to stay on top of them every week is intense the approach that I took for sharp when I was writing it was that I wanted to provide practices that whenever possible had a meta-analysis behind them.

5:15So a meta-analysis is something where, you know, basically you're taking an av. Researchers have said there's enough research studies out there that we can take averages across the studies. And there are cases where there aren't meta-analyses, that something is either relatively novel or it just hasn't been studied very much. But I thought that there was enough research behind it or a clear enough explanation that it was worth pursuing and presenting to people. And so that was one of my criteria for including practices in the book. Another criteria that I had was I wanted to try it out myself.

5:52And if something seemed unrealistic or just something that I personally found too much of a stretch. I didn't include it. So for instance, in the chapter on motivation, I talk a bit about cold water exposure. And there's so much enthusiasm now about deep cold water plunges and taking a cold shower when you need to boost your motivation. And I think there is some good research on the benefits to acetylcholine on these things and some evidence on dopamine. But I can't step away from my office desk at three in the afternoon and take a cold shower. If my motivation is flagging at that time of day, which sometimes it is, that's not realistic.

6:38So there are people, maybe even the people who create these podcasts who can realistically do that on a regular basis, but a lot of us can't. And so I really tried to work with practices that I thought, these are, you know, anyone can take a cold shower, but can you take a cold shower when you need one? That's the tricky part. And so I really tried to go for what's practical and usable, and not just in these specific circumstances, but that you could grab it and do it anytime or most anytime. And those are the kinds of strategies I was excited about. Those are the kinds of strategies that I'm also excited about.

7:14So I'm glad you said that. Yeah, you know, it's kind of funny because there are some things about, you know, improving your creativity by watching a funny video, right? With your phone, you can watch a funny video at any time. And right there are just wonderful things that I tried to look for ways that were practical, accessible, you know, some sometimes like doing a, you know, you had Kristen Neff on recently, she offers a wonderful workshop with her colleagues on self compassion training. that might be out of the budget for some people to take that kind of workshop. But it's one of the things I talk about in the book.

7:50But she also offers free resources. So I also look for things where you could do it for free if budget is a constraint, which it is for most of us. The FitMind app actually used to be paid. And then, yeah, due to the kindness of our founder is now free. I saw you're now an NGO, right? I heard that in one of your episodes. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, that's a whole other story I should share with you a bit later. And it's difficult because, of course, we live in a world where, you know, we need money. So there is also that there's two levels to this. But I'm really glad that you said that.

8:28To dive into some of the core challenges that many of us face being focused, we have to pride ourselves as being multitaskers. and your work suggests that this might be a myth and actually I can more recently in particular anecdotally agree that I cannot multitask can I ask where are you tempted when are you tempted to do it or where do you find yourself tempted or find yourself multitasking or trying to multitask can i ask that's a good question so my main passion is the mind and mental well-being health my other job is programming problem solving so going between those two there is a kind of gear shift between this and finding solutions to problems design problems or development problems and i'm still trying to figure out and this is why i think your work will help me so much just struggling to find a good rhythm or tempo of separation, really, because there is a blending of those two worlds currently for me.

9:39I understand that, especially if, you know, one pays the bills and the other is a passion. Maybe they're both passions for you, but, you know, I know plenty of software engineers. I live in that world as well. And people have great side projects and to keep the side projects on the side, not have them front and center can be tricky. Do you mind? So I think there is a myth around multitasking. I will say there is research showing there are benefits. And so we should at least briefly talk about those before we get into the hazards of multitasking. So the benefits of multitasking, especially media multitasking.

10:20So media multitasking would be, for instance, you're in a conversation with someone and you are on your phone at the same time. Or you're toggling back and forth between a website and your work, your website and your work, right? So that would be media multitasking. And what the research shows there is at work, it tends to improve people's moods if they media multitask, tasks, particularly if you just got bad news that you're stressed about, to basically get a little distance from your work and watch that funny YouTube video, you know, or to, or just, you know, to check whatever social media you like, and like find out like, oh, someone's just announced their baby shower or something gives you a little distance to like, my life is bigger than the current crisis at work.

11:06So especially at work, it tends to improve our moods. And also people in everyday life away from work will use it to give them distance from something negative that's anxiety provoking in their experience. So you might have the experience at a family holiday where you find yourself on your phone, maybe more than you normally would when you're with other people, simply because you need a little distance from your family because they're making you anxious. So the research does indicate it can lift your mood momentarily and it can help you deal with something that's making you anxious in the moment.

11:39So those are the advantages. The disadvantages, though, are much longer term and much bigger. People think it makes them more productive, and it doesn't. And we can do a demonstration of that in just a moment. The long-term consequences, people who multitask a lot have a harder time. Research shows this again and again, have a harder time holding things in working memory. So they have a harder time when they learn someone's name, they forget it really quickly. Those would be people who multitask a lot, right? So if you're someone who's like that, you might take a quick insight look. Wait, do I multitask a lot?

12:14That could be, that's you, right? It's making those moments at a party where you meet people harder or at a meeting where you meet people harder. And it also makes it harder to do deep focus later. So you might be thinking, you know what? I'm just going to multitask this morning. I've got to go back and forth between my email and my work, email and my work. I'm just going to go back. But this afternoon, I'm going to give myself the luxury of two hours of deep focus. the research indicates it will be harder to do that deep focus this afternoon if you spend your morning multitasking back and forth between things so you're you're creating you're making your life harder you're making it harder to be productive later as well as harder to focus right now if you multitask can i could we do a demonstration because i think people often think oh but terese you you might be bad at multitasking but me i'm good so can we do a demonstration of how hard it is to multitask?

13:08Okay, great. And people can play along if they'd like to. You can do this while you're driving or you don't have to set everything aside to do this demonstration. And it's in the book, but it's fun to do out loud. So here's what I'm going to do, Josh. I'm going to ask you out loud as fast as possible. I want you to count from one to seven. go. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Great. All right. And now I want you to say the alphabet out loud as fast as you can. A to G, go. A, B, C, D, E, F, G. Excellent. Good. So you were just, you were just single tasking and I'll bet you could have counted faster than that.

13:47I think you're, you know, trying to be, yeah, yeah. Do you want to do it again? Count out loud? One to seven, go. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. There we go. Yeah, I thought so. All right. So that was single tasking. You were doing one task at a time. You were focused on that. And then you did a single task with numbers, single task with letters. Now we're going to multitask. So what I want you to do is I want you to say a number and then a letter. So like 1A and keep going. Go. 1A, 2B, 3C, 4D, 5G.

14:24is that what you meant that's what i meant it quickly gets hard doesn't it yes yeah yeah so if you were to if you were to time yourself while you were doing this um you would most people are anywhere from two to four times slower when they are alternating back and forth as opposed to then they would be if they just did the two things all letters all numbers one after the other, right? If you just did all numbers, all letters, alternating is two to four times slower. Some people even slower because they start making mistakes, right? So it gets much harder. And this is, you know, you might be thinking, oh, Therese, but, you know, that's not really what I do.

15:04But it probably is. If you're trying to, for instance, compose an email or a Slack message in your kitchen and someone in your family, your partner, your child is talking to you or roommate, simultaneously as you're trying to get that message out, you're, uh-huh, uh-huh, oh no, oh, I didn't know that, wait, hold on, let me finish, okay, you're going back and forth, right? So you are, you're toggling back and forth between the things. So we don't actually multitask in terms of doing two things at once. What the research is, and this is actually what my PhD research was on many years ago, is even if it's really fast, we're actually alternating back and forth, and there's always a cost.

15:42There's a cost in terms of time, and often there's a cost in terms of errors. The research on this indicates on average errors go up 47 % when you multitask. That's huge. So that you definitely don't want to be making those mistakes when you're typing that email to your boss or manager or professor, whoever it might be. And brain activity goes down by on average 37 % for whatever the main task is. So you're not working as effectively as you would be if you just did the one task. And that's one of the reasons you make mistakes is because that brain area isn't lighting up. It's not getting the resources it needs to do the task well.

16:17And blood pressure goes up, heart rate goes up. I don't know if you felt that kind of a little bit of anxiety happening there. Yeah, I haven't seen research on cortisol going up, but blood pressure and heart rate do. So basically our body's having a sympathetic reaction, our sympathetic nervous systems being activated. So it's not good in many ways. Interesting. So do you think that could be leading into kind of chronic stress potentially? I do think so, especially when you think that working memory becomes poor when you multitask a lot, which means that it's harder for you to hold on to information, which means you're having to work harder to hold on to information, So you're more stressed.

17:07You know, your partner is telling you a story and you have to like, wait, what did you say? Okay, now I have to work harder. I have to reconstruct. Wait, what did you say again? Or likewise with a team member at work. They're explaining how to do something that you've never done and you find yourself thinking, wait, I should be taking notes. I can't remember what you said, right? So in the moment, it's more stressful long term. It's also more stressful because you are discovering you're not as focused. You can't do the deep work that you promised yourself. You gave yourself the time to do. And all of a sudden, that two-hour window for deep work has disappeared and you didn't get anything done.

17:44So that's more stressful, right? So it does add stress both in the moment and, I think, cumulative stress as well. That's incredible. I think it's so – it could not actually be more applicable. You almost described my life. Oh, no. I'm so sorry. Well, so then the question becomes how do you get out of it, right? because people say, okay, it's easier said than done. One of the things my husband and I now do for one another is I especially do it with him. I'll, I'll say two minutes, give me two minutes to finish this. And then I'm all yours. And then, and then it's, then I, then I feel I have permission to go.

18:20And, and sometimes at the end of two minutes, he'll say, you know, or three minutes, he'll say, are you with me? And I'm like, nope, I'm sorry. It turned into, it turned into five, but I promise. And then at five, I close the laptop, set it aside. And, and he tries to do the same with me. So letting the other person know, you can even say, hey, I'm trying to get better at single tasking. I promise I want to give you my full attention when I'm done with this. And letting other people know you're working to get better at this. The other thing that I find with work that is a really powerful technique, I will often set a timer on my phone for 20 minutes to go off.

18:56And in that 20 minutes, I can't check email. I can't check my phone. I can't do anything other than the task I've told myself I'm going to do for that 20 minutes. And often when the alarm goes off, I'm surprised by it. I like, oh, wow, I was deep into that. By giving yourself that permission and by saying I'm not doing anything else for this 20 minutes, it really can open up a window of focus. We can also talk about some other focus techniques in the book. But those are two things to do interpersonally as well as with your own work pacing. I know a number of people who will put signs on their doors, doing deep work for an hour, come back at one or something like that, right?

19:35And you can do it with your manager. You can say, hey, I really want to make sure I'm focused on this task and don't make any mistakes. Can I hold off on Slack messages or whatever the medium might be with your team? Okay, if I don't respond to anything for the next hour. And usually your manager will say, oh, goodness, please do what you need to. Yeah, absolutely. There is a great irony of just being overly connected to, say, like a manager versus them wanting you to get the work done, you being able to get the work done and you being available. It's just, yeah, it is a fine balance. It is. I think that's really, really, really useful.

20:20Thank you so much for listening so far. I just wanted to take a quick moment to jump in and give you an update from the FitMind team. So we recently launched an incredible new course which is free in the app, which is the preferred approach and also on YouTube. It's called 30 Days of Meditation, Science and Bliss. And this has combined what we feel is the most effective contemplative practices with what we feel is the most important of the science. Honestly, I can't believe the course is free it's genuinely incredible and has changed my life also fit mine recently transitioned to an NGO so if there is any way that you can help us at all we now survive entirely off donations and even if you can't afford to help out financially if you could just give us a like or share this podcast or the course with anyone that might help our goal here is simply just to help as many people as we can we thank you so much now back to the episode what else would you recommend for for doing that like could could we use physical maybe physical timers or um i do find it i find that physical timers help one of the strategies that was a game changer for me early on in the research of this book was to learn about binaural beats have you talked about binaural beats on on the show before?

21:40A little bit. I'd love to dive more into it. Great. So there are binaural beats. So the idea behind binaural beats is you would put in your AirPods, you put on your headphones. You wouldn't do this with ambient sound. And what you would do is after you've got your headphones on, let's say, you would go to, you just type in your browser, binaural beats, and you want to ask for 40 hertz, 40 HZ for hertz, or you can type out hertz, H-E-R-T-Z. And that will bring up on YouTube a number of different video recordings. So basically you want the audio, the video is not important. And what's going to happen is you're going to hear two tones simultaneously in your two ears.

22:20It won't, it sounds like a cacophony when I describe it, but it won't be. Basically your brain will do a subtraction. So you only hear one sound. And what's going to happen is that process of doing that subtraction, scientists call it entrainment. They call it entraining the brain. And what seems to happen when we do that mental subtraction, you won't even realize you're doing it. You don't have to put any effort. There's no math. Your brain does it all for you. It's all happening at the unconscious level. And what will end up happening is your parts of your certain neurons will begin to fire in synchrony with whatever that wavelength is.

22:58And so 40 hertz, the reason I'm suggesting 40 for focus is that seems to be the brainwaves that are associated with deep focus. So you might, you can find binaural hertz for going to sleep, and those will be binaural hertz around five hertz. That's going to make you sleepy, but 40 hertz will give you focus. And they're still trying to figure out the science of it. I've given a glossy explanation of it. We're still trying to figure out why it works. But it is so powerful. When I was doing the early research for this book, I was skeptical. And on days when I was having trouble focusing, I would bring this up.

23:37And within two or three minutes, I would be so focused. I wouldn't hear the sounds anymore. I would be deep into whatever task. So you put it on and you start whatever task you're trying to do. So it wouldn't work for a conversation, obviously, because you've got the headphones on and you're listening to a sound. But it works really well for a task on your computer or a task where you need to be writing on paper or planning out a project. It will get you deep into the focused mode. So if you're having trouble, you've given yourself that gift of I'm going to single task and you're having trouble getting into it, try binaural beats.

24:11I leave, I actually leave headphones directly behind my monitor now for this very purpose because I find it so effective. So I tell myself if 20 minutes have gone by and I haven't gotten into the task I need to be doing, if I'm checking, you know, we're looking for a house and I'm still checking real estate websites. So like, OK, it's time to do binaural beats. And it zips up my focus every time. So that's something I highly recommend for folks. Can they do it through speakers or does it have to be headphones? You know, the research shows that it doesn't work with speakers because you need to have you need each ear to be getting a different signal.

24:46and speakers would be ambient. They've actually, some researchers have tried it thinking, oh, well, we'll do this in a meeting room while people are working and hopefully it will give everyone in the meeting room more focus. And if anything, it creates distraction. It doesn't help. So it seems to, it's either neutral or backfiring. So unfortunately you do need headphones. This is a, you know, you can, this would be a cost, but you don't have to have fancy headphones. They don't have to be noise canceling. they don't think it'd be pretty simple awesome that's a great tip a lot of us yeah feel more productive when we are juggling habits or tasks what is it in the brain that's happening that's creating that that illusion i you know i think part of it it's a good question like why why why do we feel like we're getting more done i think part of it could actually be that sympathetic nervous system response where we're feeling energized, our heart starts beating faster, we get a little more excited.

25:48So that sense of excitement might be part of what makes us, and again, there's a mood boost. So those two things might give you this sense of this is a good thing, right? My body's, I'm excited about this. But actually, it's your body being a bit stressed out by it. It's not, and this is a tricky issue. I think one of the light bulb moments for me was understanding that something that can be stressful can, you know, you're anxious about a talk you have to give, let's say, you can reinterpret that as excitement. Your body's having the same physiological reaction. Your heart's beating hard. Your palms are getting sweaty.

26:25The same way you would if you were really excited about something that was about to happen. And so, you know, we can misinterpret our body signals or we can reinterpret our body signals. And And we, I think one of the things we do is when we're multitasking, I don't know about you, but sometimes when we finally close our laptop and we focus on the person in front of us, we're like, okay, all right. What were you saying? There's this sense of like, oh, relief, right? And so I think we should pay attention to that. Our body is knowing like, oh, now I get to relax, right? And that's the kind of person we want to be more often.

26:59That's interesting that you made the connection with excitement and anxiety. It's one of the insights I have had multiple times actually during meditation that if I release the resistance to anxiety, like the differentiation between excitement and anxiety is, well, none or the same. They're very, very, very similar. Oh, how powerful that you've experienced that. Well, in the way that I, as a meditator, I haven't had that level of enlightenment. So good job, you. But the way that I capitalize on this, I do a lot of public speaking. And a very useful tool for myself is the night before a talk, even though I give lots of talks, I'll still be nervous the night before.

27:49And when I can't fall asleep, because I'm thinking about the talk, I've learned to tell myself, you're excited, not anxious. You're excited, not anxious. You're excited, not anxious. They've done this in the research lab before people give presentations. And people don't believe it. They're like, I'm sorry, but I'm anxious. And they're like, nope, tell yourself you're excited. Please just tell yourself that. And what they find is speaking performance goes up. One of the really fascinating things is even though your heart's beating hard, whether you're excited or you're anxious, if you tell yourself, I'm excited, you get vasodilation.