How to Single Task Your Way to Success

Do you read email while talking on the phone? Talk on the phone while emptying the dishwasher? Read while watching TV?

Sure. Doesn’t everyone? That way you accomplish twice as much. Or so the theory goes.
If only it were so. In reality, when you multitask things take up to four times longer to accomplish, along with a higher error rate. “Multitasking is a trap, declares the acclaimed science writer Dr. Stefan Klein.

Where did the idea of multi-tasking come from? So-called productivity experts pushed the concept of multitasking based on how computers work. Picture yourself sitting at your computer writing a report. At the same time, you’re downloading music. In computer-speak, you’re using Microsoft Word in the foreground, while the download is occurring in the background. Two things are happening at the same time, enhancing your productivity.

Except your computer is actually doing only ONE thing at a time, just so fast it appears as if it’s doing both tasks simultaneously. Your computer switches back and forth between tasks several thousand times per second. So fast that no information nor time is lost.

How is your brain different from a computer? Our brains can problem-solve in ways that computers cannot, yet our brains don’t have the capacity to switch back and forth between activities without losing the information currently in working memory.

If you interrupt a task you’re engaged in, even for a minute by picking up your ringing telephone, whatever you were focused on before you picked up the phone is lost to your working memory. As you check to see who’s calling, the data currently in the forefront of your mind disappears. If you want to pick up the thread again, you have to reconstitute it retrieve it from long-term memory — or look for clues in your environment, such as checking the notes you made about what you were working on.

What’s so bad about multitasking? Studies conducted at both Harvard and the University of Michigan suggest that multitasking does a lot more harm than good. People who spend time stopping and starting tasks take 2 to 4 times longer to complete them and make significantly more errors. Further, brain scans showed juggling tasks reduces the brain power available for each activity. Worse yet, multitasking causes stress: making your brain juggle activities and retrieve lost information causes you to feel harried and anxious. Over time, stress hormones from multitasking can damage memory centers in the brain.

What steps can you take?
- Resolve to do only one thing at a time.
- Make a list of your key priorities.
- Break each priority into manageable chunks that you can accomplish in short periods of time (less than 20 minutes).
- Set the alarm on your cell phone for 17 minutes and focus on one small part of the project.
- Congratulate yourself when you complete that chunk.
- Get up and take a short breather. Stretch and look out the window. And drink a glass of water, because drinking water reduces stress.
- Then recommit yourself to completing another chunk or decide to do something completely different. Consciously choose how you spend your time.
- By choosing to focus on only one activity at a time, you’ll get a lot more done and feel happier, too.

By Doreen Stern aka The Life Docktor