Multitasking Is Ruining Your Life

Common knowledge tells us that by doing many things at once, or jumping in between different tasks, we can get more done in less time. But studies show that the opposite is actually true! Read on to learn how to regain control of your time, and even enjoy more time for yourself, simply by giving up the act of multitasking.

Multitasking is Not the Answer

If you want to take control of your workday right now, today, at this very minute, the easiest way to begin is to stop multitasking. Why, you ask? Because the only way to get the important work done is to create the conditions for deep, focused work. You can do this by setting up a proper work environment, eliminating distractions, and working on one thing, and only one thing, at a time.

What we don’t realize is that when we hop between tasks, it can take up to 20 minutes for us to reset and get back to what we were doing before.?

Take writing an email: you start writing it, but then you get interrupted. You attend to the interruption, which needed an immediate response. Then, you return to your inbox. But before you can finish and send the email, you have to reread what you already wrote, try to remember what you were going to say next before you got interrupted, and then once you remember, or come up with something else, you finally finish it.?

And boom, there went twenty minutes. Lost to the time and effort required to get back into the flow you were in prior to getting interrupted. Add up these interruptions over the course of a day and it’s easy to see how critical hours can be lost.

If you want to level up and unlock the next tier to your life, you need to stop multitasking. This, coupled with time tracking , will free up more time than you can fill. Trust me.

Studies Have Proven the Harms of Multitasking

If you don’t trust me about multitasking yet, let’s dive into the evidence. In a decade-long study at Stanford , researchers were curious about the effects of media multitasking and attention. Initially, they wanted to better understand how college-aged students were able to multitask so much more effectively than adults in an increasingly noisy media environment.?

What they found instead was this: “People who frequently use many types of media at once, or heavy media multitaskers, performed significantly worse on simple memory tasks.” In layman’s terms, instead of finding increased cognitive abilities in the students, what the researchers learned was the more that the students multitasked, the worse they were, not just at other cognitive skills, but at multitasking itself!?

In this study, those who multitasked the most scored worse than those who multitasked the least. These people were more easily distracted, which meant they scored lower on memory and retention. Moreover, they were worse at keeping information in the right conceptual boxes and being able to retrieve it later. Their minds were more disorganized, not less. And the ultimate eureka moment was when the researchers realized that those who multitasked the most scored worse on the very core of multitasking: the ability to switch quickly between tasks.?

Here's an important distinction to understand: multitasking is not thinking. It is not a quality to be developed and nurtured. Rather, it’s one to be avoided at all costs. Multitasking negatively affects our ability to think and problem-solve. It hinders our capability to sit and wrestle with a problem long enough for a new and novel answer to appear. It diminishes our ability to think originally. And although it may work for students cramming for tests who just need to regurgitate an answer and then forget it shortly thereafter, it does not work in the long term.?

If you truly want to excel in life and in your career, switching rapidly between tasks is a recipe for failure and burnout.?

And there’s more. Multitasking has also been found to increase the production of cortisol , the stress hormone. When our brain constantly shifts gears, it releases cortisol into our bloodstream which consumes energy and physically drains us, leaving us feeling mentally exhausted. And if you begin your day by hopping between tasks in this way, or typically multitask immediately upon arriving to work, then you may be experiencing mental fatigue before the workday has even begun.

The Best Strategies To Avoid Multitasking?

Now that you understand why multitasking is bad for your productivity, it’s time to set yourself up to win each day.?

First, look at your time data from the time tracking exercise you completed. What kind of patterns do you see? What times of the day are most productive for you? When do your energy levels drop? Where can you block off time to focus, and what types of tasks can you batch? Finally, what activities can you reduce or eliminate to free up more time for yourself?

Using these insights, do the following to avoid multitasking and boost your productivity:

• Make decisions the night before. At the end of your workday, look at your calendar for the next day. If you’re a morning person, block off time first thing to work on your most creative or demanding tasks. If you’re a night owl, allot that time for the evening. In addition, assess what else you can plan or prep the night before to eliminate the need to make decisions the next day. Some examples might be making your lunch for the next day, choosing tomorrow's outfit, or packing your gym bag.
• Block your time. As part of the above step, you’ve already blocked off time for your focused work. Looking at your calendar, notice whether there are times during the day where you can block off time to work on other tasks, such as email or other admin tasks. Personally, I even go so far as to schedule my breaks throughout the day! The less I need to think about minor tasks, the easier they become to execute, and the same might be true for you. Finally, leave some buffer time in your calendar for the unexpected interruptions that will invariably crop up. To do so, avoid scheduling too many meetings in a day and/or making sure you have some time in between engagements in case something goes long.

• Create a distraction-free space. When you are doing your deep, focused work (or even your admin work), eliminate as many distractions as you can control. Put your phone on Do Not Disturb. Silence notifications on Slack or Teams. Clean off your workspace of any clutter. The goal is to fix your attention only on the task at hand.
• Communicate to your team. Let your colleagues know that you have scheduled focus time each day. For me, I like to go to a coffee shop to do this work before going to the office (that is, in the world before the pandemic). For me, a coffee shop is a place where I won’t be interrupted. I pop my headphones in and work distraction-free. This way, I’d arrive at the office ready for the chaos and interruptions of the day knowing that I got my most important work done already.
• Batch your admin tasks. After tracking your time , you'll likely notice how much time you spend hopping in and out of your email and social media feeds. You might also notice that you do a lot of small tasks throughout the day. Instead, schedule your inbox time so that you only respond to emails twice a day. I find that late morning and towards the end of the workday are best for me, though perhaps it will differ for you. Most emails don't require an immediate response, though when a new one arrives, many of us are tempted to read it right then. Next, I recommend batching your admin tasks for a time during the day when your energy is lowest. Admin-type tasks generally don't require creativity, which makes them easy to do when your energy level is lagging.?

Time is the most important commodity that we don’t own. Each day, it’s up to us to determine how we use it. The first step in that journey is to track how you actually spend your time . Do this over a two-week period and you will immediately begin to see patterns and opportunities.?

After reviewing your time data in more detail, the first thing I recommend doing is identifying when your energy levels are the highest and protecting that time to do your focused work. Next, schedule or batch tasks that don’t require as much focus during your lower energy time of the day (or better yet, schedule yourself a? nice long break at those times).?

The best kept secret about multitasking is that if you stop doing it, you will actually get more done in less time—and with far less stress and anxiety. And with fewer mistakes to correct later. As as result, you'll be able to devote some of that freed up time to nurturing yourself (e.g. meditating, taking a walk, playing a game), nurturing your relationships (e.g. calling your mother, scheduling coffee with a coworker or friend), or nurturing your career (e.g. reading a book, taking an online course).?

You can also create the time and space to think. Our best ideas do not arrive when we are in the heat of battle–putting out fires, hopping between tasks, responding to every person asking for our attention. Rather, our strongest ideas come when we slow down, give our minds space, and let the creative side of our brains process and find patterns. This is the power of singletasking . It creates time for us to be our most creative and to find the answers to our most pressing problems. And while we can’t technically create more time, by following the steps above and by reducing (or ideally eliminating) multitasking, we can get more done in far less time. As a result, we can stop dreaming about how we want to live and start living that life today.