Last week I talked about phraseology and the details. This week we're staying in the foundational phase of the tools you need as a controller, and I'm calling this one the multitasking tool.

If you've read me before, you know I'm not a huge fan of what most people call multitasking. I don't think anyone can really do multiple things at the same time. Plenty of people disagree with me, and that's fine. 

But there are some things you can and should be able to do together as a controller, and building that ability is what this post is about.

I want to start with a quote from John Maxwell:

"You don't become a great multitasker in one day. You build one small discipline at a time. Eventually, those disciplines become habits. And those habits free your mind to think ahead."

That fits air traffic control almost perfectly. If you've been following along, you know I'm a big believer in finishing one thing and then moving on to the next. These small disciplines are what let your mind do exactly that.

One of the biggest things Academy students don't realize is coming is strip marking.

They don't think about it before they get to Oklahoma City. They don't think about it in Basics, because they don't have to do it there. And strip marking is becoming less of an issue as the FAA moves further from paper strips. 

But there are still places where you have to use them, and the en route portion of the Academy is one of them.

Strips are still used in both radar and non-radar, but especially in non-radar. As long as non-radar is part of the Academy, this is something you need to be aware of.(It looks like the Non-Radar portion of the Academy will be going away early in 2027.)

You can't really practice strip marking before you arrive. 

What you can do is start training your mind to be ready for it. You'll need to mark strips while you're talking; and while you're listening, which is the harder of the two.

Nobody walks into this career able to do that from day one. 

For some people it comes more easily, and for others it's harder. 

But everybody starts at zero. 

If you're struggling with it right now, that's okay. We all struggled with it at some point.

Have you ever watched an experienced controller work and wondered how they're doing all of that at once?

Let me tell you about the time I did. 

I had been in the FAA for nine years and I was an experienced controller. I arrived at Fort Worth Center along with a handful of others who showed up the same day from different facilities. Three of us were experienced controllers, and the rest had come straight from the Academy. For several weeks we were upstairs learning maps and what the facility expected of us.

Near the end of that stretch, a controller transferred in from Oakland Center. He was on a different training track than the rest of us. The three of us who were already certified had all come from towers, but he came from a center, so he was fast-tracked. He went into our simulator, the DYSIM, and started running problems for the specialty he'd be working. It was one of the busiest areas in the building, if not the busiest.

We were allowed to go down and watch him work the most difficult sector in the building on a simulator problem. I stood behind him, watched, and realized I might be in the wrong building. If they were going to require me to do what he was doing, I wasn't sure it would work.

I'm telling you that story because wherever you are in your ATC journey, you may find yourself in the same spot.

The Academy likes to take your class in to watch a class that's ahead of you for a short while, so you can see where you're headed. Then a newer class comes in and watches you. It's a continuous process. You do it in non-radar, and you'll do it again in radar.

It's the same feeling every time. 

You watch what the class ahead of you is doing, and you start to wonder if you'll ever get there.

Part of what this blog is about, and part of what these tools are about, is getting you from where you are to where you want to be and need to be. 

Multitasking is one of those tools.

Let's talk about what multitasking isn't.

You don't magically learn to do two things at once. I say "appear to," because you're not actually doing multiple things at the same time. 

You're doing things quickly enough, surely enough, and correctly enough that it looks like you're doing multiple things at once to someone watching. The observer simply can't think that fast.

Think about driving. 

Your foot is on the gas and you're looking out the windshield. You're also scanning your speed, your fuel, and your route. If your car has a GPS display, you're checking when your next turn is coming. You're also noting who's beside you, who's ahead, and who's behind. (We'll talk about your scan in another episode.) 

You aren't doing all of those things simultaneously. Your scan is moving fast enough that you can drive and check things in the same moment.

Typing from something that's written down works the same way. You're reading first and typing second, but quickly enough that it looks simultaneous. 

Playing the piano, or any instrument, is no different. You're reading the notes and playing the notes.

When you first learn any of these skills, it takes a lot of concentration and you have to go slowly. Over time you get the mechanics down, and you get to go faster. Your brain learns that it can move ahead.

When you first learn to drive, whoever is teaching you probably doesn't have the radio on. As you get better and the mechanics become automatic, you can turn the radio on. 

Your brain is now free to listen to music without being any less involved in the driving.

That's what we're building.

The Academy will teach you, and then require you, to talk and write when you're giving a clearance, and to listen and write when someone is giving a clearance to you. That's particularly true in non-radar.

You'll start at the point where that's all you can do. 

I've seen students who couldn't listen and write at the same time. I've seen students who couldn't talk and write, even when the writing was just circling the clearance as they gave it. 

It sounds simple, but when you're sitting in that chair and giving the clearance, it isn't simple. 

Not unless you've practiced.

The more you practice, the more your brain gets used to it. 

If you can get to the point where you can talk and write and listen and write at the same time, you'll be so much further along than the people who can't. 

It's all about these little bitty things that you keep adding up, and adding up, and adding up.

You've heard me talk about the four levels, so let's keep using them.

Level 1: pre-Academy (or whatever ATC school you're headed to). 

You've been building individual tools: learning, listening, phraseology, the details, the alphabet, the numbers, your maps. But you haven't really built multitasking yet.

There are simple ways to start. 

Take notes at a lecture. 

Take notes from an audiobook. 

Take notes from a podcast. 

The key is that you can't hit pause. 

At the Academy, you can't stop the clock and finish writing before you move on. 

It's a lot like a lecture. 

When I was in college, we had a joke about one of my history professors: if you dropped your pen, you missed a thousand years of history. She talked that fast. (I'm just glad I didn't have her for Spanish. She taught that too.)

Pre-Academy, you can start training your mind to listen and write and to talk and write at the same time. That matters most if you're headed to en route, but it applies to tower as well. 

There's going to be writing involved: call signs, strip marking for clearances, and probably some strip marking for ground control, like writing runways on strips. 

If you can do those things while you're talking and listening, you're ahead of the game. 

And that's where we want to stay.

I can tell you from experience, from being there with students, that being able to write and talk, or listen and talk, "at the same time" will keep you from feeling overwhelmed. 

If you struggle with it, you're struggling to keep up, and that's when time seems to speed up on you. 

If you can do these things together, the clock seems to slow down. 

You seem to have more time to do what you need to do.

Level 2: the Academy. 

This is where you build the strip marking and clearance habit. 

Clearances and strip marking go hand in hand, and the Academy does a fairly good job of teaching them that way. 

You need to learn them that way too. 

A clearance isn't really given if the strip marking isn't there, because you need proof on the strip of what you did.

Level 3: your first facility. 

What you'll use depends on where you land. 

TRACONs don't use strips. 

I'm not even sure the TRACON I work under has a printer by the controllers' positions. I know flight data has one, but beyond that I couldn't tell you. Even so, controllers there take notes from time to time.

In towers, it's a different story. 

Where I work, we keep a pad with all the call signs, and we take our traffic count from it. There are times when it gets busy enough that it's very difficult to keep up, and we sometimes have to go back and ask, "How many touch-and-goes did that guy do? How many did this guy do?" and fill in the gaps. If you've built the habit of writing and talking, or talking and writing, at the same time, you'll be ahead and it'll be much easier.

At your first facility there is also a lot more pressure. 

You can't stop the clock when it's real traffic. 

You just have to keep going. 

Being able to do these simple tasks well enough, often enough, and fast enough will help you in training.

Level 4: CPC. 

This is where you become the guy from Oakland Center: calm, assured, and able to step in and work the problem. Remember, I came in as a CPC just like he did, and I looked at what he was doing and thought, Oh no. Will I ever get to that point?

You can. 

You can become the person other people watch and wonder, "How could I ever do that?" 

I got there, and there's nothing special about me. You can get there too.

It doesn't happen because the job has gotten easier. 

It hasn't. 

It's actually gotten much more difficult. 

It happens because those individual tools have become habits, ways you simply do things. 

That frees your brain to anticipate problems and to solve them in interesting ways. (That may be what we talk about next week, though I haven't decided.) 

It also lets you mentor and train others, and it lets you make better decisions.

Writing and talking, and listening and writing, may not sound like a big deal. 

It really is.

Even if you end up somewhere you don't use strips much, training yourself to write and talk at the same time pays off. 

Here's why:

So how do you build this tool? 

One thing at a time.

The Academy will teach you strip marking and where to write things. When you reach your first facility, they'll teach you whatever strip marking they use. 

Learn it, and learn it, and learn it until you can't do it wrong.

This isn't memorization. 

It's practice. 

As you learn the strip marking, you free yourself to concentrate on the listening and on the clearances. 

Practice it until your brain is free to move on, but make sure you finish what you're doing before you let it go to the next thing.

If you do that, you'll stay ahead of the entire problem or scenario, whether it's tower or en route. 

You won't be wondering whether you did that, because your strips or your pad are up to date. 

You can stay ahead without worrying about what you might have missed.

You have to trust the process. 

You have to trust that the practice will make it work.

It isn't about how quickly you become good at something at the Academy. 

It's about how consistently you work at getting better, day by day. 

That's what the Academy is about, and it's what training at your first facility is about. 

It's what Level 4 should be about too. 

Even as a CPC, you should be getting better at your craft every single day.

In the five years I worked with students, watched students, and taught students at the Academy, a few of them could multitask this way on day one. Most of those had come from a CTI school. Even students from the military struggled at times, because the military doesn't require the same amount of writing while talking or listening that the FAA does.

But a lot of the successful students weren't the ones who could do it on day one. 

I tell the same thing to every student I mentor and coach: it's not about doing it on day one. 

They don't give you an evaluation on day one. 

In en route, the evaluations come on day 29, and on days 58 and 59. 

They don't expect you to do it on day one. 

They do expect you to do it on the evaluation days.

So trust the process. 

Put in intense, focused practice, one tool at a time. 

And one day you'll realize you're not struggling at work anymore. 

Whether that happens at the Academy, at your first facility, or even as a CPC, all it means is that you've built your tools to the point where you can do them almost automatically.

I'll close with a quote from Robert Collier:

"Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out."

That's what becoming great at this profession is all about: small efforts, consistently, day in and day out.

Thank you for reading, and thank you for hanging in there with me. If you need help, or you want to schedule a free call so we can talk about where you are in your journey and how to get where you want to go, you'll find the links at sidebysideatc.com.

Remember, you don't have to navigate your ATC journey alone. Let's do it side by side.