To do two things at once is to do neither – Publilius Syrus
Multitasking is a lie, so don’t do it. The bottom line is that we can’t do two things at once. Well, we can, but we are just doing two things at the same time inefficiently. Researchers estimate that workers are interrupted every “11 minutes and then spend almost a third of their day recovering from these distractions.” As Jay Papasan said in his book The One Thing, “it’s not that we have too little time to do all the things we need to do, it’s that we feel the need to do too many things in the time we have.”
6 Reasons Why You Should Not Multitask
1. There is only so much limited brain capability at one time.
2. The more time you spend switching back and forth between tasks, the less likely you’ll actually complete the original task.
3. Your brain has to contacted re-orient itself to the new task when you make the switch. This adds up and what researchers estimate to be an average of 28% ineffectiveness.
4. Distortion of time: multitaskers feel like tasks take a long time, when in reality they don’t.
5. Multitaskers make more mistakes.
6. Multitaskers are more stressed
There is no hack for multitasking, just don’t do it. If you were to do anything, consider Task Switching. This is the concept in which you are deliberate and intentional about switching tasks. Then, block out time to return to the previous task you were working on originally.
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Photo: Getty Images
Thanks for mentioning our book, Joel! If it’s not too much trouble, please list Gary Keller as an author as well. His name is in bigger font for good reason! 🙂