I think we can all finally be honest: multitasking is not only a bullshit term, but it’s pretty inefficient.
While we’d all like to be able to juggle multiple tasks, like talking on the phone while sending an email and working on a spreadsheet while making copies and listening to music on our iPods all multi-armed Hindu diety style, it just doesn’t happen. At most, you might have a few different windows open on your desktop and are half-heartedly conversing with a co-worker or friend while trying to focus on typing something. Or vice-versa.
The problem with “multitasking” is that it doesn’t really work. You’re always more focused at one task than the others, and when you do shift focus, it’s more likely to be a distraction than actually working on another project concurrently with the one you’ve been doing. Yes, a computer can multitask (running multiple programs) in the same way that a person can multitask by walking and chewing gum at the same time (performing multiple actions), but people are not made to multitask on things that involve a lot of conscious thought.
Think about the last time you multitasked on several projects. It seemed like each of them was going to take a long time, and your stress seemed compounded, right? That’s because you should have been unitasking.
If you force yourself to focus on a particular task, you are going to give it more time and care than if you were also “working” on a few other things. It’s not so much about supposed efficiency (and really, you can do a lot more a lot faster by untiasking than multitasking), but more about effectiveness. When you think about it, multitasking is a form of procrastination, as you are putting off task completion with other projects that are not as pertinent or needing of focus. And we’ve discussed how to fix that little problem before.
So the next time you feel like doing a few dozen things at once, slow it down. A strong solid focus on one task at a time will yield superior results (and take less time) than breaking it up with several other projects.
