Thou Shalt Not Multi-task.

“Multi-tasking is dead. It never worked and it never will. Intelligent people love to sing its praises because it gives them permission to avoid the much more challenging alternative: focusing on one thing.” – Lifestyle design king, Timothy Ferriss

What is multi-tasking?

Multi-tasking is doing (or being able to do) two or more things simultaneously.

When you’re relaxing and doing a few trivial things simultaneously such as watching TV, chewing gum and texting your friend, it’s harmless. However, I believe that doing several things simultaneously in a work environment can have negative consequences for your overall work productivity and creativity.

The human brain works most efficiently when you’re performing one task at a time. When you multi-task, your brain is switching its concentration back and forth. It takes time for a brain to focus and refocus when switching between tasks. The time it takes to focus is time that the brain is not performing at its optimum level. The more you switch back and forth between tasks, the less productive you become.

How multi-tasking affects learning.

Cognitive psychologists know that when learning something and absorbing new knowledge into your short-term memory quickly and effectively requires you to concentrate. Only after knowledge has reached the short-term memory is it able to be committed to long-term memory. If you don’t concentrate fully when learning something new, you hinder the process of correctly absorbing information to short-term memory in order for it to be committed to long term memory. Please remember that multi-tasking inhibits concentration which in turn hinders learning.

Josh Waitzkin once observed students during a college lecture multi-tasking by using their laptops to shop online, check Facebook, email, online shop, upload photos and read the news, wrote:

“Students defend this trend by citing their generation’s enhanced ability to multi-task. Unfortunately, the human mind cannot, in fact, multi-task without drastically reducing the quality of our processing. Brain activation for listening is cut in half if the person is trying to process visual input at the same time. A recent study at The British Institute of Psychiatry showed that checking your email while performing another creative task decreases your IQ in the moment 10 points. That is the equivalent of not sleeping for 36 hours—more than twice the impact of smoking marijuana.”

How to break the multi-tasking habit.

1. Concentrate on a single task for a longer uninterrupted time period.

Choose an important task and concentrate on doing it for up to two hours non-stop and then have a short rest. Breaks are important, as they help you refresh, but don’t take them too often.

2. Limit checking and replying to email to twice a day.

Commit to setting specific times to check and reply to your email and stick to those times. For example, you can check it at 8am and then once more at 4:30pm. Don’t allow yourself to check more than this.

3. Follow Pareto’s 80/20 Law.

Are you trying to do too many things that aren’t really important to your work or enjoyment of life? Do you have regular contact with too many people that eat up your time? Here you can use Pareto’s 80/20 Law. It states that in life you’ll find that it’s approximately twenty percent of activities, customers and relationships that bring you approximately eighty percent of your productivity, income and happiness. Try to spend eighty percent of your time on twenty percent of your most important tasks, customers and relationships.

4. Be wary of social media.

When I joined Facebook and Twitter, I spent a lot of time on them. Twitter, for bloggers can be particularly addictive because you can find so many useful and interesting links. The more people you follow on Twitter, the more chance you’ll see a link that you want to click on. I limit myself using Twitter only twice per day now. I limit going onto Facebook to once or twice a day for about five minutes per time. I have blocked almost every application invite on Facebook. I’m not interested in pissing my time away on fighting zombies, throwing sheep and blowing virtual kisses.

5. Control your time on the computer.

I believe a huge reason that people who work at home don’t maximize their productivity is because they get into the habit of spending most of their time on a computer. You have so many distractions on there. When you’re working, only use the computer for tasks when the task at hand requires it. Close all other applications that can distract you such as IM programs like Skype and MSN and disable any automatic email and message alerts. Close all irrelevant web windows.

Conclusion.

By taking the above five steps you’ll be able to focus better on the task at hand and eliminate the multi-tasking plague from your life.

I’d love for you to comment below with your thoughts about multi-tasking.

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1. When Productivity Meets Lifestyle Design.
2. Book Review: The 4-Hour Work Week.
3. Productivity Tip: Eat A Live Frog In The Morning.
4. Bootstrapping Vs. Outsourcing Vs. Partnering. Part 2: Outsourcing
5. Productivity Tip: Don’t Do It!