Earlier I’ve written about multi-tasking and published a small interaction to help you draw conclusions about it. When multitasking, productivity decreases up to 40% and stress rises. Our lives would be happier, healthier, and more productive if they just focused on doing one thing at a time. Harvard Business Review’s Peter Bregman spent a week consciously not multitasking and writes about it.
His results?
• First, it was delightful
• Second, I made significant progress on challenging projects
• Third, my stress dropped dramatically
• Fourth, I lost all patience for things I felt were not a good use of my time
• Fifth, I had tremendous patience for things I felt were useful and enjoyable
• Sixth, there was no downside
He provides great information about how to stop as well – well worth a read. Hit the jump - How (and Why) to Stop Multitasking
May 27th, 2010 at 3:08 pm
I am sure that is all true, but you are obviously not a parent!
May 27th, 2010 at 5:21 pm
I’d disagree, I’m the proud parent of an almost six year old hyperactive boy…
However, as the article points out, perhaps it wont result in the best performance, and leads to some stress. As a parent, I can attest to the ’stress’ of it.
I multi-task all the time
May 28th, 2010 at 9:49 am
Is it also applicable to frequent task switching during a day?
Like, working on one project while giving support to another project and giving estimates for yet another project and resolving queries on a project you worked several months ago and handling feedback comments for some toatally different project… along with the “2 minutes plz” meetings and of course casual workplace interactions / jokes…
Would one be more productive and efficient if there was relatively less task switching?
May 30th, 2010 at 9:01 am
Looking at this from a learning perspective – and especially an eLearning perspective – this raises the question of how do we discourage learners from multitasking? Research suggests that our brains don’t really multitask, and instead we just switch our attention between tasks rapidly…potentially missing something during the switch (hence the tendency for decreased performance). Since people tend to overestimate their ability to multitask, learners may do this without an awareness of the potentially negative impact on their learning.
At the risk of blatant self-promotion here – I recently wrote an article about this for an audience of online learners on an insurance continuing education blog. It was called “Multitasking Hurts Your Learning.”
Here’s a link: http://blog.internetce.com/2010/04/05/multitasking-hurts-your-learning/
June 8th, 2010 at 12:19 pm
From psychological perspective, if we observe then multitasking can be bit stressful to the learner. But from the high school days itself, a student’s mind is exposed to various subjects like English, Geography, History, Maths, Geometry, Social studies etc. Acquiring the multitasking skills is a requirement for professional in today’s industry. I agree with the article which throws a light on doing single job at at a time. But the skills of doing multitasking jobs vary from individual to individual. If a certain individual has the competencies to deliver multiple jobs within the committed time then he should go ahead. Every coin has two sides, so this article is partially right and partially biased which shows some negativity towards multiple tasking. The competition of industry has risen to such a extent that every IT professional is seen grasping additional knowledge with the flow of the time and the growing requirements of the firm.
April 12th, 2011 at 5:44 am
I strongly agree with this post. The results taken from not being able to multitask in a week or so is quite impressive. If you really want to improve your productivity and efficiency you really need to focus at one thing at a time thus decreasing your stress level and makes you more efficient and productive.
May 24th, 2011 at 4:47 am
I strongly agree with this post. The results taken from not being able to multitask in a week or so is quite impressive. If you really want to improve your productivity and efficiency youmust focus to one thing at a time to decrease your stress level and makes you more efficient and productive.
To learn more about the effects of multitasking, take my free exercise at http://www.davecrenshaw.com/exercise
July 6th, 2011 at 7:22 pm
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