Obstacles in the way of productivity: Multitasking

The author of this post - Yuri Calin.

The myth of multitasking. refutation of the myth

The main obstacle in the way of productivity for many people is that they believe in raising their productivity through multitasking. To test the truth of this myth suggest you conduct a simple experiment. For this we need a stopwatch, and a sheet of paper.

Mark Twain said: "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics." I'm paraphrasing his sledubschim way: "There are lies, blatant lies and multi-tasking."

Multitasking is worse than a lie. multitasking The problem lies in the fact that multi-tasking has become a unique element of contemporary culture and calmly accepted by people as the norm. At the present time is considered to be that the more simultaneous tasks you choose - the more productive you look in their eyes and the eyes of the people around you and colleagues.

All subtlety is that our brains can not work simultaneously with multiple tasks and it forced to quickly switch from one task to another (there is a number of Miller's 7 ± 2 meaning units).

Multitasking = cost of switching between tasks. Return back continuously.

The negative effects of mnogozadachnocti

1. When operating in multi-tasking time required for completion of cases increases significantly. One business owner of complaining about the fact that she has a lot of time is spent on the execution of simple operations: it at the same time I wrote a letter to his client to give instructions to his assistant and talking on the phone with supplier. And these 3 tasks she spent time 1:00 (not yet completed the last task). But when she followed the recommendations and shared tasks from one another, it turned out that the call for took the phone from her 7-minute conversation with the assistant took 3 minutes and writing a letter to the client took 3 minutes. Total: 3 tasks have been successfully completed in 13 minutes.

For this reason, many people at the end of the day there is a feeling when they feel exhausted: all day they were worn, saving the world, solve a lot of questions, and the result - a minimal, almost nothing really, and not completed.

You are juggling tasks and rushed between them, but almost nothing has been brought to its logical end and to an acceptable result.

2. The quality of problem solving. When you are constantly switching from task to task, the quality of work is reduced due to the very high the probabilities mistake in each of the tasks performed in parallel. Do you have often happened is that you have delegated to someone simple task, thus gave a simple and clear instructions for its implementation, and the problem has not yet been completed (or permanently remade). Do you think that the person to whom you delegate this task impenetrable stupid? (Although it happens). Most likely it is a symptom that the person to multitask.

3. Multi-tasking increases your stress level. Elevated levels of stress topical lately in big cities and big offices (open space, which are gaining vogue with us and from which the West has refused or seeks to do so). Even if you do very simple things or solve simple problems, the stress level increases significantly. On this theme in the book is well written by Leo Babauta, which I have translated and can be downloaded on the network Interenet ( «Focus free» - «Concentrate free"). Wondering if I can give the link at the end).

Here are the most obvious consequences of multitasking. There are plenty of non-obvious consequences.
All this was so urgent for the reason that multi-tasking has become accepted as normal human beings and quite commonplace.