AI Finally Taught Me How to Multitask

People Have Been Trying to Figure Out How to Multitask

People have been trying to figure out how to multitask for as long as I can remember. It makes sense. We all have more things we'd like to get done than we have time to do them. So we try to answer an email while we're on the phone, think about one problem while we're working on another, and keep three or four things running around in our heads at the same time.

I've never been particularly good at that. My mind moves fast. I'll be thinking about one thing and suddenly another idea shows up. Then another one. Sometimes I can have a pretty good idea and lose it before I even get ChatGPT open to talk about it. I've actually been learning to slow my thinking down just enough to hold onto the thought long enough to do something with it.

And somewhere along the way, I realized something: AI finally taught me how to multitask. Not because AI somehow trained my brain to concentrate on four things simultaneously. It did something much more useful. It allowed me to stop carrying all four things in my head.

I'm Not Doing Four Things. I'm Directing Four Things.

That distinction has changed the way I work. I might be working on the New Tech Advertising website and realize something needs to change. I can open a conversation, explain what I'm seeing, talk through what I want to accomplish, and get that work moving. Then I might think of something that needs to happen for a client's website.

I can move to another conversation and start working on that. Then an idea for an article might hit me. Instead of telling myself, "I'll remember that later," I can start another conversation and capture it while it's fresh. At times I've had three or four different conversations going in separate windows. From the outside, that probably looks like multitasking.

But I don't think that's really what I'm doing. I'm directing multiple streams of work. And AI is carrying much of the context and work that I used to have to carry myself. That's the breakthrough for me.

The Limitation Wasn't Always Time

For much of my life, if I had an idea, there was still a whole chain of work between the idea and the finished result. I had to remember the idea. Think it through. Figure out how to do it. Do the work. Keep track of where I was. Solve the problems that came up. And somehow remember everything else I was supposed to be doing while I did it.

There are only so many of those chains a person can carry at once. AI changes that. Now I can have the idea and start talking. I can explain what I'm trying to accomplish, answer questions, correct misunderstandings, make decisions, and then let AI help carry the work forward. That leaves my mind available for the part where I believe I'm most valuable: thinking, recognizing, connecting, deciding and directing.

It's Almost Like Having Managers

Maybe "multitasking" isn't even the best business comparison. Maybe it's management. A good manager doesn't personally perform every task happening inside a company. If the manager tried to do that, the company could never become larger than that person's individual capacity. The manager needs to understand what is happening, establish direction, communicate what needs to be accomplished, make decisions and review the results.

I'm beginning to think AI gives an individual person some of that same leverage. I don't need to personally carry every detail of every project every minute that the project exists. I need to give the AI enough understanding to help move it forward. Then I need to come back when my judgment, experience, approval or another idea is needed.

That's very different from asking AI to run everything for me. I'm still responsible for the direction. AI simply increases how much I can direct.

That's How I've Built NTA

When I look at everything I've built with New Tech Advertising, this is really how I've done it. There wasn't one enormous plan that I sat down and executed perfectly from beginning to end. It grew through conversation. I would see something. I'd have an idea. I'd talk it through with AI. We'd build something. That would cause me to see something else.

I'd move over there and work on that. Then I'd come back. Little by little, all of those conversations started connecting into a much larger system. And I realized that AI wasn't simply helping me work faster. It was expanding the amount of work I could direct without requiring me to personally carry all of that work in my head.

That's a much bigger idea than productivity.

Maybe We've Been Thinking About Multitasking Wrong

For years, we tried to make people better at juggling. Maybe the answer was never becoming a better juggler. Maybe the answer was having somewhere intelligent to put the ball. That's what AI has become for me. I can take a thought out of my head, put it into a conversation, develop it enough that it has context and direction, and move on without having to keep rehearsing it in my mind so I don't lose it.

Then I can return to it. The conversation is still there. The context is still there. The work is still there. And I can pick it back up. So yes, after all these years, I think AI finally taught me how to multitask. Just not the way I thought multitasking worked. AI didn't teach my brain to do more things at once.

It allowed my brain to carry less while directing more. And for me, that has changed almost everything about what one person can accomplish.