What if the path out of overwhelm was less about doing more and more about doing less—intentionally? In a world saturated with distractions, decisions, and demands, the CIA’s covert approach to multitasking offers a surprising lesson for the rest of us.

Former spy Andrew Bustamante unpacks how operatives in high-risk, high-stakes environments manage overwhelming complexity—not through superhuman ability, but by mastering one surprisingly simple principle: do the next fastest thing.

ANDREW BUSTAMANTE: CIA teaches us that there's only three resources that matter in life. There's energy, time, and money. You can always create more energy, and you can always create more money, but you cannot create more time. So you are literally always working against a clock, a clock that is ticking, a clock that is counting down, a clock that is rolling forward and you really start to feel the pressure of time. Instead, what you need to understand is the very same time that's making you anxious is actually your most valuable asset. [Narrator] How to multitask like a spy. Current research shows that the average person has to make more than 1,600 decisions a day. They have to decide when to pick up the kids, what to feed them for dinner, what to say to their spouse, when to call their mom. They're keeping track of when the next time is to put out the trash and they're keeping track of when the next time is to mow the lawn. There are an overwhelming amount of tasks that you have to carry out every single day, and the same thing happens to us when we are operating in the foreign field. It's something that we call task saturation. When there's more tasks that need to be done, then you feel comfortable carrying out with any sort of effective capacity. And task saturation is a very dangerous thing because it can result in decreased cognitive ability, increased stress, increased anxiety, and an overall sense of unproductive success. You can learn to identify and manage your own threshold for tasks so that you never enter a position of task saturation. We have a very simple rule of thumb at CIA that says that however many tasks you think you can confidently carry out simultaneously, subtract two. So if you think you can do seven tasks simultaneously, just do five. If you think you can only do three tasks simultaneously, cut down by two, so you just do one. What happens when you take this simple rule of thumb and you reduce the number of tasks that you're trying to accomplish by two, you are essentially increasing your resources for fewer tasks, which increases your productivity with each of those tasks. And as you become more productive, you gain momentum with the other tasks. And above all, you have this very positive mindset and this very positive attitude that allows you to continue being productive. In contrast, when you allow yourself to reach a place of task saturation, the opposite effect happens. You start to feel like you're not being productive, you start to feel like you're overwhelmed, and you develop a negative mindset that actually starts to create more problems that keep you from being productive. Once you are task saturated, you have to start working to resolve or reverse your level of task saturation. The first step is one where you have to accept that you are actively in a position of task saturation, which means you will not accomplish all of the tasks that you're trying to carry out. Once you accept that you will not be able to do all the tasks you're trying to do, the next step is to prioritize the remaining tasks that you have. At CIA, we call this operational prioritization, which means that to continue the operation and to achieve success, we must prioritize in a very specific way. This is where time becomes your most valuable asset and your best friend because time is something that you can't argue with, time is something that you can't debate. So when the time comes that you need to operationally prioritize your tasks, you want to use time to help you put those tasks in order. So you ask yourself the question, "What is the next task that I can carry out in the shortest amount of time?" Yes, I know it sounds simple and it sounds basic, and it may even sound silly or stupid to you, but it's the very fact that that question is so elementary in nature that makes it so reliable when your whole body is working against you because you can't deny the simple truth that some tasks can be done faster than others. And as you start to complete tasks in that lens of operational prioritization, you start to gain momentum, you start to reduce your total number of tasks, and you start to gain back confidence as you get back to the place where you are able to manage the remaining tasks that you have. Imagine that you and I are meeting with a terrorist asset in the foreign field. Maybe that's somewhere in the Middle East, maybe that's somewhere in southeast Asia, and we don't know that we can trust this person. Maybe they are carrying a bomb strapped to their chest, maybe they're carrying a gun, maybe they have a group of people that are waiting just outside the door to attack us as soon as we sit down. But the secrets that this person has are so valuable that it's worth the risk of trying to have the conversation. We are gonna go into that meeting and right away we will be task saturated. But you have to focus on the next simplest task, which really is just saying hello to this terrorist target. That is a simple, stupid, basic thing, but it is something that only takes a few seconds before you start making progress. Now imagine in this situation when we sit down to meet with this terrorist asset that the worst really does happen and that this terrorist stands up and pulls guns out of his pockets and points these guns at you and me, and we have to immediately flip ourselves into some kind of defensive or survival mode. Again, you realize that we will be in an immediate position of task saturation. What do we do next? Here's a person in the room with us actively trying to do us harm. Do we help each other? Do we help ourselves? Do we scream for help? Do we make a phone call? Do we try to radio in the military to save us? The answer is you have to do the next fastest thing. We are trained in that situation that the first thing you have to do is protect yourself. So you take cover, you hide behind a piece of furniture, or you fall on the floor and you hide behind a large chair or a desk or a table. You try to do something to keep yourself safe. It's fast, it does not take a lot of time, but it gives you the space and the momentum that you need to make the next decision. So from your position of cover, now you know you have one less task. You are now physically protected from the person with a gun. But what do you do next? The answer is you have to assess the room to decide what your next step will be. So you use your ears, you use your eyes, you use your mouth to speak out and find out whether or not the other person that you're in the room with is safe, whether they're protected, whether or not you know where the shooter is, whether or not you're counting how many times they fired their gun. You're making all of these decisions in real time, choosing the next fastest decision because that's what will keep you alive. You're not trying to do the next most complicated decision. You're not trying to solve all the problems at one time. You're not trying to play a hero. You are literally just trying to make the next fastest decision that you need so that you can have one less decision to make so that you can be one step closer to survival. We don't often deal with life and death situations in the real world. We don't have to worry about whether or not someone's strapping a bomb to their chest or whether they're coming in to try to hurt us, but we do have to deal with surprises and unexpected events all the time. Surprises from our children at school, surprises from our bosses at work, surprises from our spouse at bedtime. We never know when the next surprise will happen, but no matter when you find that surprise present itself, no matter when you find yourself in that moment of task saturation, your path to survival is literally as simple as doing the next fastest thing. Because as you accomplish those tasks, you will build momentum, you will build confidence, you will build a sense of productive activity that gets you back to the place where you feel confident with the level of tasks that you have left, and you will overcome that feeling of task saturation. One of the biggest challenges we face when we find ourselves in a moment of task saturation is that emotionally we start to say very negative things to ourselves in our own head because we have given up on rational thought, so now our brain has all this extra capacity to start using emotional thoughts. So instead of trying to focus on a productive outcome, our brain starts to self-criticize. We actually start telling ourselves, "Oh, I should have never done this thing in the past," or, "I'll never do that thing again." You start to have all these negative thoughts that pile on with the brain's additional capacity by letting go of rational thought. This is something we call head trash. It's all the junk that comes into your mind where you start to self-criticize and self-demean and self-ridicule because your brain has this additional capacity that it's not using on rational thoughts. Head trash and negative thinking can become a real problem because it actually convinces you to stop trying. It convinces you to give up. It convinces you that you are not capable of things that you actually are capable of doing because as soon as you start to think you can't do something that you actually have the capacity to accomplish, you end up right back in that very same place of sense making where you try to avoid and escape instead of face a problem head on and accomplish what you know you can accomplish when you have rational thought. We are literally wired to doubt everything around us because that's how we survive. But we live in a world where we're trying to thrive and lean into and sometimes even trust the world around us, but we have not evolved biologically to the place where we can do that yet. Overcoming task saturation through the simple process of being able to do the next fastest task kept us alive when we were living in caves and running from predators. It will also keep us alive and help us to thrive in today's modern world because at the end of the day, we still view the world around us as something that is either a threat or not a threat. Sometimes your children coming home and throwing a fit is a threat. It's a threat to your sleep. It's a threat to your stress. Sometimes the boss calling you at 8 o'clock at night is a threat. It's a threat to your worry. It's a threat to your career. It's a threat to your job prospects. Sometimes when you get a bill in the mail, it's a threat, and we constantly find ourselves living in a world surrounded by threats that make us feel overwhelmed, just like we did when we were living in a cave and we were threatened by all the predators that surrounded us. We have to understand that the simplest solution is oftentimes the best solution, and that has proven true for us countless times, and that will prove true for you with operational prioritization. So here's my challenge to you. You will feel overwhelmed tomorrow and the day after and multiple times this week. Task saturation is virtually guaranteed if you're in any kind of professional workplace environment because the demands are always going to outweigh your confidence in carrying out certain tasks. So when you identify that moment where you are carrying more tasks than you have confidence that you can execute, try to do the next simplest thing. Maybe that means you have to stop to make yourself lunch. Maybe that means you have to stop to pour a new cup of coffee. Maybe that means you just need to sit and take a few deep breaths for yourself, but you will find that if you accomplish that simplest task first, you will find motivation, energy, momentum, and positive thinking that allows you to continue moving forward. When you practice operational prioritization just one time, you will immediately feel the benefits, but that won't make it a habit, that won't make it a reliable tool in your tool belt. You have to drill this, you have to practice it over and over again. You have to practice it at home, you have to practice it at work. You have to make it part of your routine that every time you reach that point of task saturation, you will literally stop and do the next simplest thing. And when you see the benefits of that over and over and over again, you will be behaving like a trained operator, like the best in the world who can travel anywhere to accomplish the impossible.