Cooking on the Back Burner

This notion of appropriate—perhaps even essential—multi-tasking at the neurobiological level leads us to a fundamental dynamic: we are operating in our brains at many different levels at the same time. Much as Sigmund Freud noted with considerable insight more than a century ago, there are many different thoughts and feelings running through our brain at any one time. Some of these thoughts and feelings are operating at a conscious level while others are operating at an unconscious or vaguely conscious level. At some of these levels, we are working on the solution to complex problems, formulating creative ideas, linking together ideas from several different sources, and producing new narratives regarding people we know, events we have witnessed and even our own decisions and actions. We use the term “incubation” when trying to describe and analyze these elusive and wondrous processes.  We are cooking on the “backburners” of our mind, ready to serve the tasty dish when the time is right.

Often this incubating “dish” is served when we are relaxed (for example, when taking a bath or shower) or when we are distracted by some other activity (such as when we are driving to the office). The multi-tasking that occurs on the backburners is quite remarkable. My own doctoral students often illustrate the power of backburner work. The Professional School of Psychology, where I have served as President for more than twenty five years, provides graduate education primarily to mature and accomplished men and women over thirty years of age. As you might imagine, most of these students are working fulltime. They typically have significant family obligations and are often dealing with major intrusive life events (such as the lingering illness or death of a parent). They have “no time” to work on a doctorate, let alone write a thesis or dissertation. Yet, we find that their many life challenges do not diminish their capacity to do graduate work; rather, they are able to let their work simmer on a backburner while meeting other obligations in their lives. When their graduate work is ready to move to the front burner, they can often write quickly and frequently link their “simmering” thoughts with events and lessons learned in other parts of their life. Conversely, when I was a full-time graduate student, living and working with other young full-time students, I often experienced “writer’s block” – as did most of my colleagues. I was focusing all of my attention on the graduate work I was doing and never moved it to my backburner. I soon learned that I worked best by having several writing projects operating at the same time, with one or more of these projects simmering for a while on the backburner. Is this good advice to give the men and women we are coaching? At the very least, shouldn’t we reassure them that it is not such a bad thing to be working on several projects at the same time?