How Multitasking Is Killing Your Productivity
For many of us, the work from home policy is a whole new experience, and a lot more of us have started multitasking while remote working. I am terrible at multitasking and fail at it miserably.
For the longest time, I felt terrible about it. In my opinion, it has more side effects than good ones like loss of time and quality and higher levels of stress.
I unapologetically admit that I cannot exercise & have a conversation simultaneously. Definitely can’t write emails while talking to my mom! I need my full concentration and peace of mind to complete a task depending on its type.
“Do one thing at a time” — Research from the University of Houston:
Such plate-spinning can bring the mood down for entire teams in big corporates. Furthermore, the researchers have also found that multitaskers tend to appear sadder and more fearful than non-multitaskers, and those feelings tend to be contagious.
Hence, for those who are inclined to take on many things all at once, consider a “one thing at a time” approach instead; if not for yourself, then for your co-workers. Honestly, this current situation made me wonder if something is wrong with my brain or if I am slow.
Neurologically our brain is designed to focus on only one thing at a time. Researches show that when participants were working on two different things simultaneously, only one part of the brain was working & then the brain switched sides for the second task. Clearly, this isn’t the most effective way to do this!
While some of us really need to focus and find it hard to split the attention, doing more than one thing can be disastrous, like spilling food all over.
In my opinion, the whole idea of multitasking is a myth. I still have doubts about multitasking being counter-intuitive or overhead and the side effects of context switching.
