Most people are of the opinion that multitasking makes them more productive. Well you if are one of such people, you are about to understand it’s actually not that way. Doing one thing at a time is just about the best way of getting everything done.
One of the guiding principles about this is because when you engage all your time and thinking in doing a single task, it will help you to achieve more which means getting more done in a short while.
Multitasking is good to some extent, but it is more of more haste less speed. Performing a single task at a time means more attention to the work at hand, working smarter, remember more and less distress. Unlike when performing more than one task at a time means working harder which does not necessarily transcend to achieving more.
To be more explicit, performing a single task at a time is a powerful way of achieving more and being more productive. Judging from the surface, there is no sense in it, because mere thinking will show that doing more than one task at a time means faster, achieving more hence being more productive. Many people will vehemently argue this.
But what you as a budding entrepreneur should know and understand in the journey of building an empire or a brand for yourself is the performing more than one task at a time will make you busier, more engaging.
Multitasking will make the brain more stimulated hence releasing the main pleasure chemical, dopamine. However, multitasking will not make anyone more productive rather it reduces productivity level and this has been backed by numerous studies.
It is understandable that human brain is highly powerful, but the amount of information it can process at a time is limited. According to a study performed by Timothy Wilson, it shows that the brain only process about 40 bits of the 11 million bits of information it receives every second.
It will be wise if the limited attention can be used wisely. This shows that despite the information that the brain receives, the attention that we can give to what is in front of us is highly limited.
The human brain can only focus on so much that its flooded with such as words, to-dos, sights, sounds and many others, so utilizing it wisely can help in achieving more within a short while.
Most of the time that humans think they are multitasking, in the real sense, they aren’t doing such according to a study on multitasking. What the brain does during this time is rapidly switching between the tasks at hand because it is impossible for the human brain to completely focus on more than one task at a time.
What multitasking does is the limit the quality of the job done, instead of focusing fully on one task, the brain’s ability is shared thin and this will reduce the ability to dive deep into a single task hence minimizing the ability to do a thorough job.
According to a University of California professor, Professor Gloria Mark when speaking to Fast Company that getting back to a task takes about 23 minutes and some seconds after an interruption.
Now, if you think about the time that will be wasted when switching from one task to the other rapidly. Productivity is different from being busy or working fast.
Productivity is all about accomplishment, and you cannot accomplish much when you are doing more than one task at a time. So, it is obvious that performing a single task at a time is the surest way of accomplishing more and getting everything done in less time.