Multi-Tasking: 3 Reasons why it’s Actually Counter-Productive

With all the ways modern technology allows us to make our work easier for us, it’s hard to believe that there can still be a way for very little to be done – and then there’s multi-tasking.

What’s Multi-tasking? Multi-tasking sounds great as a concept – you divide your attention by doing multiple things little by little at the same time, and instead of finishing just one task, you can do two, three, or maybe even four.

However, once you actually start doing it, it’s actually hard to get anything done at all. Here’s why you should stop doing it:

1. Your brain can’t handle it. It’s designed to focus on one thing at a time, which is why many people describe being “in the zone”, or in a state where their focus is completely directed to their work and they don’t notice anything else. When you can’t focus on one thing, you also don’t feel the investment you’re putting into your work, and with this lack of oversight means…

2. You’re more likely to make mistakes. The more tasks you try to do at once, the more you try to shift between one task and the other. This means you can’t focus well enough on any one task, which means you’re more prone to making mistakes with your work. And because you’re not focusing on your work, you won’t commit it to memory, which leads to…

3. You inhibit creativity. When you’re constantly shifting your attention from one task to the next, not only do you rob yourself of the time you need to actually focus on getting it done, but you also prevent yourself from seeing any possible ways to improve the overall work. Even if you do get the tasks done, you keep yourself from accessing parts of your brain that allow for critical thinking and creativity, so you’ll only manage to come up with results that you won’t be too happy with.

Improving Focus and Concentration
With the constant stream of information being delivered to you through your computer and mobile devices, it can also be hard to focus on any one thing. However, you can still achieve focus through a number of ways.

Here are some tips you can use to improve your concentration and focus on your work:

• Eliminating distraction by prioritizing tasks from most urgent to least urgent, and start with the most urgent task first, and then work your way down until you clear up the least urgent tasks for the day.

• Engage with your work. Even if you don’t like what you’re doing and need to get it done, simply being passive and doing it for the sake of doing it won’t give you the results you want.

• Put aside all tasks not related to what you’re doing. If you find yourself researching information on the internet, close the tabs and applications that aren’t related to what you’re doing.

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