Being able to multi-task seems to have become one of the most desired skills these days and we proudly tell each other how we managed to answer our emails while eating lunch and tweeting our friends all at once.
So is multi-tasking really the most effective way to get work done? The simple answer is no, on the contrary.
A study observing 262 college students by Stanford University researchers Eyal Ophir, Clifford Nass and Anthony Wagner, who published their findings in a recent Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that those who did a lot of multi-tasking were terrible at focusing and got easily distracted. In essence, the study found that multi-tasking trains us to focus on stuff that is irrelevant and doesn’t matter.
Instead of juggling several tasks and an ever increasing workload and busy social life at once, it’s time to simplify your chore list and – most of all - slow down. Start with re-evaluating the tasks on your to-do list. Are they really all necessary? Can they perhaps be batched together to free up time?
Leo Babauta, author of The Power of Less gives some great tips on how to single task on his blog Zen Habits. As a good starting point to simplify your workload he suggests looking at how you waste time: ” What are your common distractions? Perhaps things like email, reading blogs, Twitter or another social network? Set a time for these, preferably later in the day: say, from 3-4 p.m. Don’t do the distractions before then. By grouping them all into one time period, you allow yourself to do other work first, but still get in your distraction time. Another approach might be to do them for 10 minutes at the end of each hour — but stick to that 10-minute limit!”
Leo also suggests setting yourself a time limit on how many hours a day you work, checking your emails only three times a day, and generally taking time to focus on one task at a time. For more ideas check out this gerat list and get single-tasking.
image: theheartof.com.au
