Many people say that multitasking is the way to save time and increase productivity. Even more proud themselves with the title “Good Multitasker”, but does multitasking really help us get more results or it just makes us look busy?
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2 Important FACTS that you need to know about multitasking:
- Fact 1: Scientific study conducted by the Stanford University in 2008 showed that multitaskers are actually slower than “singletaskers”.
- Fact 2: Our brains can only work on one task at a time. We can switch from one task to another, but we can never really pay attention to more than one thing at a time.
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Effects of switching attention
The switch itself feels like a fraction of a second but in reality you need around 5-10 minutes to make a complete switch of focus.
It’s just like driving a car, you start at 0MPH and after a some time you get to 160 MPH. But for the human mind… getting from 0 – 160 usually takes around 5-10 minutes. Now multitasking is like stopping each time you get to 100MPH and starting all over again from 0…
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The hidden reason why we multitask: Short Attention Span
Most people have an attention span of around 10 minutes. This means that after 10 minutes they will start feeling bored, annoyed, angry or anxious and will automatically switch to something different in order to release the stress.
This can be DEADLY if unnoticed because with time your attention span will just decrease to the point where you feel that you need to switch tasks on each few minutes.
Also, it is really easy to slip in the distraction land and think that you worked 8 hours when in fact you were mixing work with checking mail, updating your facebook profile and chatting on Skype.
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Distractions: Automatic Attention Switchers
Each time your attention is grabbed by a new email or a message your momentum is lost and you need 5-10 minutes to start working fast again.
And there is simply too many things that want you attention. Your Email, Facebook, Skype… Friends, Television Ads, Banners and tons of other shit that scream for attention (yes even that candy bar over there).
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My experience
In around a month I doubled my attention span and now I work 2x faster. I bet that this will double again with time.
Anyway I still do a bit of multitasking from time to time because it is inevitable…
However, I now group all of my “multitask” activities and focus on completing them in one work block of 90 minutes. You can call that a focused multitasking.
The thing that is critical when you are doing a focused work is to cut all possible distractions. Sometimes this means disconnecting form the internet or even writing an article on a paper. Total Isolation.
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How to discover your attention SPAN:
http://psychologytoday.psychtests.com/cgi-bin/health/transfer_health.cgi?partner=pt&test=attention
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Exercise:
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Just try working with FULL focus on one thing you find really important and insolate yourself from distractions for ONE hour (if you start feeling a lot of stress after 30-40 minutes this means that your attention span has atrophied… try notice when you shift attention to something else)
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Key point to remember:
1) Multitasking is often times counterproductive
2) We can focus on one thing at a time, each switch of attention costs speed and time and IQ 
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