Close your eyes and think of a successful person. What are they doing? Chances are they’re juggling their employees, deadlines, phones calls, e-mails, and a billion other tasks. Somewhere along the line we’ve come to associate success with a life of busyness and overcommitment. As a result, successful people are perceived to be multitasking all the time.
In my professional life, I’ve struggled to limit the amount of tasks I complete at any given moment. There seems be to pressure to make multitasking part of my daily routine. Perhaps this is due to the sheer number of tasks we need to complete in a day, or maybe we’re trying to get more done in a limited amount of time. Whatever our motives may be, it’s unlikely we’re accomplishing them. Even worse, multitasking can be quite harmful to our productivity and emotional health.
What exactly is multitasking? It can present itself in various ways. Most people associate it with doing multiple tasks at once, and this isn’t incorrect. If you’re answering the phone, writing an e-mail, and watching TV at the same time, you’re multitasking. It can also present itself as switching between tasks to accomplish more. If you need to print twenty reports and answers twenty e-mails, you might switch back and forth so you’re answering an e-mail as the printer is actually spitting out the report. Multitasking can also be jumping from one task to another very quickly. You might call a customers, answer an e-mail, print a report, answer a second e-mail, open some mail, take another call, etc. Regardless of how you multitask, it can have very similar impacts on you.
I’m currently learning this the hard way. Multitasking can be fatiguing and hinder productivity in the long run.
How Does Multitasking Impact Us?
Whenever I try to do more at once, I immediately feel the impact. My brain feels like my laptop once the fans start spinning. I know I’m using a lot of energy at once, and I’m going to be consuming a lot of my resources. Yet I continuously multitask.
Research indicates humans only have limited amounts of attention to give. When we try to multitask our attention frantically bounces between tasks and overstimulates us. The result is stress. Studies have found that individuals who are interrupted during their work feel significantly more stress after only twenty minutes. They also feel less satisfied with their quality of work. Even if they complete tasks, they’re more likely to walk away feeling unproductive.
Beyond the stress, memory begins to suffer. Experiencing interruptions during a task reduces short term memory. Individuals may view information but fail to use that information to make meaningful cognitive connections. As a result, they’re more inclined to forget what they just observed and make errors when moving to their next task. This is particularly true with older adults, but young adults are not immune. Young adults tend to overlook information when there are more distractions. When you consider these adults may be electing to incorporate media such as television, podcasts, or music into their daily routines, they have a recipe for forgetfulness.
Perhaps worst of all: it’s almost never effective. Multitasking often takes more time than it would to complete two single tasks thoroughly and sequentially. Plus, you’re inclined to make more mistakes when you’re doing more than your brain can handle. These are unpleasant results for those who want to multitask to be more efficient, yet they’re often overlooked. So why do people do it? For the same reason people play the lottery. A small percentage of people (in the case of multitasking it’s 2.5%) get the desired result. Most people are going to fall into the undesirable majority, but they think they’ll be different.
When Multitasking Becomes a Problem
If you’re anything like me, I can’t blame you for wanting to multitask throughout the day. Most days I have a lot of obligations I don’t want to do. Needless to say, investing my attention into these areas feels like a chore. So, I want to finish these chores in as little time as possible so I can maximize my free time.
I do feel I’ve been bred to have this mentality. I look at the retail jobs I’ve had as a young adult. While standing on the floor, I needed to fold clothing, greet customers, advertise promotions, and watch for theft. That type of fast-paced environment can be a whirlwind for a new employee making minimum wage. I’ve also been on the other side of the spectrum where I’m in a job with hours of meetings that don’t pertain to my position. As the meetings go on, I’m getting piles of e-mails with one or two kernels of relevant information. It’s tempting to try to chip away at e-mails while listening to a co-worker ramble on.
Over time, I’ve come to realize I’m probably not that good at multitasking. Sure, I get things done, but I don’t feel good about it. I feel like I ought to be doing more and that my life has become a never ending list of chores to complete. Even mild inconveniences become hurdles I need to remove as quickly as possible. I neither embrace it nor do I learn from it; my goal is to remove it.
With all of its downfalls, multitasking is also known to cause anxiety. I feel this is impacting me, as the small tasks have become disproportionally large annoyances. Single-tasking also makes me feel as if I’m not doing enough. As I write this article, I’m “listening” to a YouTube video and have my work e-mail opened in the background so I can be interrupted by notifications.
Counteracting Multitasking
Clearly, I’m still struggling to remove multi-tasking from my life. I recognize that it’s causing problems, but it’s also a method of avoiding my uncomfortable and annoying responsibilities. If I need to fill out a form? I’ll do it during work. If I’m afraid of writer’s block, I have YouTube in the background to shift my attention.
How am I going to handle this? To start, I need to acknowledge what media I can consume without hindering my productivity. That definitely does not include YouTube or television shows. It also doesn’t include podcasts, but I know I work well with music in the background. Especially music I’m familiar with, not new music where I want to listen to each line and decipher the meaning of the lyrics.
There also needs to be a commitment to pushing through uncomfortable moments. When I write, I usually have somewhat of an outline to follow. The moment my mind begins to wonder, I can revert to the outline. This will force me to complete the task before moving on to something else.
A similar approach can be taken to any responsibility you need to complete. When you have projects at work and chores to complete, make a list of these obligations. Map out your day sequentially, and approach each task with the mentality that you’re only going to look at it once. This may not hold true for everything, but the objective is to complete as much as possible without breaking your focus. If you approach a point where you can’t continue, move on to the next task. Do not return until you’ve scheduled time to return.
You also need to give yourself permission to let some things go. Every so often I find myself watching a TV series or listening to a podcast I don’t like. It’s OK to drop things when you’ve lost interest. This will give you more free time and remove commitments that make you feel overwhelmed. Do not force yourself to continue consuming media as you work. This will only give you more commitments and make you feel more anxious.
These small tweaks make a huge difference in the right environment. Turn off notifications, distance yourself from unnecessary screens, and stick to your plan.
Feel Better, Accomplish More
I recognize a lot of my current anxieties relate to the feeling of being overwhelmed. This required me to reassess how I’ve been spending my time and recognizing when these feelings are strongest. For me, this was when I tried to cram many tasks into a small period of time, even if the tasks weren’t time-sensitive.
My conclusion: do less to do more. Throughout my days, I’ve tried to reduce my number of distractions so I can focus on a single task at a time. I don’t really spend less time working, but it takes me less time to reach my end goal. This is because multitasking has resulted in a bunch of distractions that prevent me from completing tasks. Usually it takes me longer to feel a sense of completion, and I always feel more frustrated when I get there.
Changing my approach to working has required me to break some stigmas I’ve learned throughout life. Multitasking really isn’t a productivity hack, and there’s no evidence to suggest it’s beneficial. The evidence actually suggests the opposite, and my firsthand experiences have suggested this is true. Now, my goal is to get in a zone where I can focus more and accomplish more. I know what can break my concentration, but I have taken steps gain more control. This will make me a master of single-tasking. Rarely do we brag about this, but it should be celebrated more often.
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