There’s an adorable commercial for AT&T hitting the airwaves right now in which an adult sits with first or second graders and asks them “Which is better, to do two things at once, or one at a time?” All of the children immediately shout “two!!”
They couldn’t be more wrong.
When it comes to multi-tasking, which entails doing two – or even more! – things at once, we may think that we’re more productive, but we’re actually less so.
Much less so.
Julie Morgenstern, a productivity expert and author of the book Time Management from the Inside Out, wrote at Forbes.com in January that it’s “been scientifically demonstrated that the brain cannot effectively or efficiently switch between tasks, so you lose time. It takes four times longer to recognize new things so you’re not saving time; multitasking actually costs time.”
In fact, she adds, multitasking causes you to make more mistakes, thus increasing the time needed to complete a project even more because you then have to correct the mistake.
She also states that studies have shown that multitasking causes us to learn at a much lower rate.
To work smarter, she recommends doing the following three things:
- Build breaks – of one to three hours in length – into your day when you don’t look at your smartphone or e-mail. This allows you to “engage in…deeper and different way[s].”
- Don’t look at e-mail or any computer or smartphone screens in the first and last hour of your day (this means your entire day, not just your work day). This allows you to “wake up and engage in a deeper, more focused activity of some sort. It’s easier to start deep and come up to the shallow,” she writes. In addition, she mentions that looking at electronics in the hour before bed actually can keep you awake.
- Plan your day out in detail. This includes meetings and the things you need to get done. “The more specific you are, the more you are to combat distractions,” she writes. She also recommends that you do the important things first, allowing you the opportunity to get distracted, etc. later in the day once they’re completed.
When it comes to e-mail, Morgenstern recommends that we schedule two or no more than four times a day to check and respond to the items in our inbox.
Finally, understand that you may feel uncomfortable for a few days once you put these new guidelines into place. “People who succeed give it a few days of discomfort, like a drug withdrawal, and then they can get through it,” she writes.
Have you started putting limits on how much electronic viewing you do in a day? How has that been for you? Are you finding yourself more productive and less stressed?
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