One of my favorite interview questions used to be: “Tell me something you believe to be true that most people believe to be false.” I love it because it tests the willpower, debate skills and creative thinking of candidates. I have a few things I believe that most people don’t, and I’m gonna dive into one with you right now.“You cannot multitask and you’re lazy if you try.” I disagree, but I’d like to explain the difference between multitasking (low focus) and context switching (high focus). And I’m sure you will disagree with much of what I say.Humans are quite skilled at multitasking. If you’ve been working from home during the pandemic, you’ve probably mastered keeping your children alive while working longer hours than ever before. Multitasking is something we all do to manage our day-to-day tasks that require little focus or mental stimulation.Enter context switching. Elon Musk calls it batching. Jeff Bezos calls it serial multitasking.Call it what you want, but it is as simple as intense focus on the task at hand with the learned ability to quickly switch to the next task without a distracting “break” in between.You may argue this is just a more advanced form of multitasking and cannot be done. Elon Musk runs Tesla, SpaceX, and Neurolink (and in his free time a few others). Jack Dorsey runs Twitter and Square. Jeff Bezon runs Amazon. They all agree and have spoken about the impact of this practice. It appears they are proving it can in fact be done.Here is the most basic description and the origin of the terminology: “A context switch is the procedure that a computer’s CPU follows to change from one task to another while ensuring that the two tasks do not conflict.”Did you know that unless you have multiple computers linked together, a computer is not capable of true multitasking? If your computer has 4 tasks to complete, it sets up a queue. It then works on the first task, saves the task progress, and then pushes it to the end of the queue until all tasks are completed.You’ve probably had this happen before. You’re on your computer with several applications open and one of them is not working. What happens? The computer does not keep going while just pushing aside the one failed application! The whole thing stops and you’re forced to restart entirely.Neuroscience tells us something similar about the human brain. When we try to do multiple things at once, our brain is actually just switching between activities very quickly and placing them in the queue.Here is why I underlined and bolded “without” in my definition of context switching. When we are focused and switching between tasks, we can stop for an innocent notification, phone call, coffee break etc… our whole system stops and we are forced to restart.This is what Jeff Bezos is referring to when he mentions serial multitasking. These small, seemingly innocent breaks are what derail us. You start thinking about what you forgot to do yesterday, so you start on that and you never finish the initial tasks you had started on.Effective context switching is a major competitive advantage when we practice and are present for the task at hand. Gary Keller, the founder of Keller Williams, says it best, “You can do two things at once, but you can’t focus effectively on two things at once”.The root trait we must learn is being fully present with each task and be able to move quickly from one to another.Try these 3 things as you practice context switching:

• Eliminate distractions, big and small (Read about why billionaire Mark Zuckerberg wears the same clothes every day and drives a basic reliable Acura).
• Practice Mindfulness. Check out the newsletter from last week, where we talk a bit about how to bring your mind back to the present when it is wandering.
• Make time for things that are important to you. If all you’re trying to do is knock out 50 tasks a day that you don’t care about, you’re never going to improve and be effective at context switching.

---Follow me on Linkedin, and check out my post on context switching.I joined James Carbary on his B2B Growth show last week. Take a listen.