The Multitasking Temptation Revisited

Multiitasking has been proven to kill your productivity. Yet, for some it’s a lifestyle and others an expectation. Others see it as a strength.

People are terrible at doing more than one thing at a time, even though many of us are fooled to believe that we are actually good at it. When we multitask, two things occur:

1. We get less done.
2. The quality of what we do is lower.

There’s a recommencement cost of at least several seconds every time you get back to a task that got interrupted. Each time you switch to some other task you risk getting hit with more resumption costs. This loss time adds up and multiplies as you continue getting distracted with interruptions throughout the day.

It is almost inevitable that each individual task will be slower and of lower quality when you are using multitasking as a methodology to try to accomplish more. Likewise, it is acutally faster to do one thing at a time instead of trying to multitask.

Another problem with multitasking is that we are more inclined to make more mistakes while doing multiple tasks simultaneously, especially those that require your full attention or those that are unrelated. As a result, the quality of our work declines.

In a 2004 study at MIT, researchers found (by doing MRI scans on brains of test subjects) that it’s impossible for the brain to think about more than one thing at a time.

Multitasking is an incredible temptation. As a business owner, I struggle with it myself from time-to-time. When I am not fully engaged in what I am doing I often check email frequently and begin responding to incoming messages without completing articles I am writing or blog entries. Fortunately, when I am on the phone with a coaching client, I am not multitasking! However, often when I am participating in a teleconference call or meeting I will see (or sense) others checking their email or messages.