Task Saturation, Ruthless Ignorance, and the Power of Focus

Guest Post
I have noticed that I’m most productive when I’m about to go on a trip. I abandon all of my complex “productivity tools” (Outlook, an online collaboration tool called Basecamp, some really cool apps on my iPhone) and just scribble down a quick list of all the things that I have to do before I leave, on a single piece of paper. With the deadline of a booked flight looming and no time to mess around, I carry that piece of paper with me everywhere … and I get things done.
As I buckle myself into my seat on the plane and finally relax, I always find myself thinking: “Wow, I actually got all that done in the last few days. Why can’t I be that productive all the time?”
I got some unexpected insight into this recently when I went to hear Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger speak at the Museum of Flight in Seattle. In case you’ve forgotten, Sully’s the guy who successfully put an Airbus A320 down in the Hudson River after a bird strike killed both engines on that fateful day last year, saving the lives of all 155 people on board.
I’d seen Sully in interviews on TV, and what had struck me most was his cool, calm manner. Sully was airline captain material through and through. His presentation at the museum was no different. In fact, it had the quality of a speech he’d given hundreds of times, and not in a bad way. His words were carefully chosen, carefully stated, and the whole affair was as polished as the wings on his uniform probably were throughout his career (he retired on March 3rd after 30 years with U.S. Airways).
What, you may be wondering, does Captain Sullenberger’s adventure  have to do with productivity? Everything, as you’ll see in a moment.
Sully began his talk by playing an animated reconstruction of the event, featuring the recently released recordings and transcripts of the communications between him, First Officer Jeffrey Skiles, and air traffic control. It’s an amazing recording, and as a pilot, I found my mind reeling at the enormity of the situation they found themselves in, and the pressure to find a solution … quickly.
The question I wanted to ask Sully was this: “Was there a point during the 208 seconds before you hit the water when you were so task saturated that your brain overloaded, you panicked, started praying, and basically just hoped for the best?”
I didn’t have to ask, because he obviously gets this question a lot. “My pulse shot up,” he told us. “My blood pressure shot up. My perceptual field narrowed because of the stress. And I had to really actively compartmentalize and focus and force that distraction away and just concentrate on the task at hand. So I forced calm on myself and then I imposed order on the situation.”
That made sense. What he said next though was more interesting to me: “Finally, because I knew that time was so limited, I focused only on the highest-priority items and I ruthlessly ignored everything else as a mere distraction.”
A light bulb flashed on in my mind as I realized the implications of what he was saying. If you don’t allow an overwhelming amount of things into your awareness, then by definition you can’t be overwhelmed. Here’s the clincher: you can control what gets into your awareness.
More often than not, when we’re overwhelmed, we point to external factors as the cause. “I’m so stressed out,” we tell our friends. “I have too many emails to answer, too many phone calls to return, too many errands to run. I think my head is going to explode!”
Really though, our emotional state in each moment is completely independent of all those commitments we’ve made to ourselves and other people. We get stressed out because we let the stressors in all at once, when the reality is that we can only do one thing at a time.
So, while it may seem like the sure, directed calm of a Chesley Sullenberger is the antithesis of the No Map. No Guide. No Limits. approach to life and business that Lane promotes on this blog, the truth is that we adventurers charting our own courses through life and business actually need this ability to “ruthlessly ignore” everything but the essential more than most people. Because while running your own business is admittedly nothing like landing an airliner on a river, it can sometimes feels like it.
If a pilot like Sullenberger can successfully cope with the stress of an unprecedented emergency like the Hudson incident, then surely we can cope with the objectively less life-threatening stressors in our own lives, right? Yet while it may seem that it’s the higher stakes at risk in an airline cockpit that enable pilots to act under pressure so effectively, the truth is that these are not skills we just “pick up” along the way in life. They must be learned. Unlike entrepreneurs, airline pilots acquire and master these skills because they practice them, relentlessly, in simulators. Sullenberger spent 30 years doing so as an airline pilot, and six years before that as an F-4 pilot in the Air Force.
Intrigued by all this, I started doing some research on task saturation, and came across a book called Business is Combat by fighter pilot turned business consultant James Murphy. Murphy defines task saturation as the stress-based paralysis that comes from needing to do too many things in too short a time. Sound familiar? He also refers to it as “the obstacle to flawless execution.”
The military has spent a lot of time and money researching and mitigating task saturation over the years, and the most surprising thing they learned early on was that typically, pilots weren’t even aware of its onset. Pilots would become cognitively overloaded and hit the ground before they even knew what was happening.
The first step to effectively dealing with task-saturation is to identify it when it first starts. The symptoms are easy to miss, because you actually think you’re improving matters. Murphy explains that there are three major symptoms of task saturation:

• Shutting Down by simply fleeing an impossible situation (mentally or physically).
• Compartmentalizing by shutting down certain parts of the brain as a way of focusing on one thing at a time (ignoring the essential big picture in the process).
• Channelizing by focusing on one thing to the total exclusion of all others.

Murphy notes that task saturation in pilots is so common that they actually include the subject in their briefings, pointing out exactly when during a particularly challenging mission it’s most likely to occur so that it’s easier to recognize.
According to Murphy, the military gives pilots three tools to overcome task saturation:

• Checklists that boil essential normal and emergency tasks down into simple steps that have been proven to work without fail.
• Cross-checking which enables pilots to seemingly do multiple tasks at once, by continuously moving their attention from “flying the airplane” to other things and back again.
• Mutual Support, or working as a team, to make up for the momentary deficiencies of any individual. (Never go anywhere without a “wingman.”)

Murphy is the founder and CEO of Afterburner Inc. a training and consulting company of fighter pilots who teach the lessons they learned in the military to business people.
“Murph” would tell you that as an entrepreneur, you can use the same tools fighter pilots use to avoid task saturation in your own life. You can create and use checklists to do repetitive tasks without having to think. You can move your attention to the fringes of your business activities while always returning back to the core, important stuff. And you can enlist the help of other people to provide support when needed, and keep you focused on what really matters most.
In spite of the happy outcome, it might seem like Sullenberger was guilty of compartmentalizing or channelizing. Let’s look again at what he said though: “I focused only on the highest-priority items and I ruthlessly ignored everything else as a mere distraction.”
The key is that he didn’t just pick the loudest thought and focus on that. He used a checklist. He cross-checked and never lost control of the aircraft. And he took advantage of the mutual support offered by his First Officer, his flight attendants, and air traffic control.
Armed with all this knowledge, I’m not so sure the boosted productivity I gloated about at the beginning of this post is really something to be proud of. If I’m honest, the sense of relaxation I always feel once I’m on my way somewhere after a few days of running around like a madman probably has more to do with having done a lot of things (and survived) than having done all the right things. This is made evident by the fact that all the stuff I ignored is always waiting for me when I return home.
Truth be told, when the clock starts ticking, I compartmentalize (“Oh crap. I better get this work done. I’m leaving in two days!”). When the clock starts ticking louder I channelize (“Oh crap. I better drop this stuff and start packing. I need to leave for the airport in a few hours!”) Eventually (and inevitably), I shut down and literally flee the scene (“Whoops, out of time. I guess I’ll just deal with everything else when I get home.”)
Next time, I’ll try a different approach as soon as I see the symptoms of task saturation developing. I’m going to make a checklist ahead of time of all the things I always need to do before I go on a trip. I’m going to cross-check and stay in control. And I’m going to enlist the help of those around me to prepare ahead of time.
None of this information is new to me, really. It’s the same stuff authors like Eli Goldratt, David Allen, Tim Ferriss, and Leo Babauta have been writing about for a while now. I do think though that it’s interesting to start exploring topics at the extremes. Lessons learned in one field of human endeavor can usually be applied to others. And, as ridiculous as it may seem, the little kid inside me who watched Topgun about a hundred times is sort of excited about the new aviation spin I can put on some of these techniques.
I’m particularly looking forward to telling people, “I’m not ignoring you. I’m ruthlessly ignoring you to avoid task saturation.”
We’ll see how that goes.

Mike Singer is a writer, entrepreneur, and an occasional contributor to No Map. No Guide. No Limits.
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