The first step to breaking up with multitasking is to break up with the word – period. It is scientifically impossible to truly multitask. What you are actually doing is Task Switching.
What does that look like?
According to the Psychology Today:
Task switching, not multi-tasking — The term multitasking is actually a misnomer. People can’t actually do more than one task at a time. Instead, we switch tasks. So the term that is used in the research is “task switching”.
One of the most compelling reasons to stop multitasking or task switching is in our wallets! Research shows that we are losing time and money by committing to multitasking vs being task focused.
Task switching is “expensive” — There has been a lot of research on task switching. Here’s what we know from the research:
- It takes more time to get tasks completed if you switch between them than if you do them one at a time.
- You make more errors when you switch than if you do one task at a time.
- If the tasks are complex then these time and error penalties increase.
- Each task switch might waste only 1/10th of a second, but if you do a lot of switching in a day it can add up to a loss of 40% of your productivity.
- Task switching involves several parts of your brain: Brain scans during task switching show activity in four major areas: the pre-frontal cortex is involved in shifting and focusing your attention, and selecting which task to do when. The posterior parietal lobe activates rules for each task you switch to, the anterior cingulate gyrus monitors errors, and the pre-motor cortex is preparing for you to move in some way.
In addition, task switching doesn’t allow us to prioritize what is really important in any given day. Giving equal importance to so many tasks can leave you feeling burned out, overwhelmed and suck the excitement out of your business.
So, it’s time to break it up and break down HOW you want your days, weeks, months and years to look.
Read the Full Article Here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/brain-wise/201209/the-true-cost-multi-tasking
To your success,
Jairek