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Multi-tasking has been turned into a virtue over the past thirty years, especially with many people having one day job and craft moonlighting on Etsy or doing Master Gardener consulting on the side. Or, you happen to know how to code software and have one start-up in the works and are still doing web design consulting. Or you are just running a game of the War of the Worlds while also checking your FB and Twitter feeds. Or, you are a mother with three young children (now that’s the original multi-tasking!).
Whichever way you are put under pressure to multi-task, you can now “brag” about it as if it were some new-ish virtue. But it’s not. We may get more done, but the quality will suffer.
One Thing at a Time for Your Brain
Recent research indicates that our brains actually work best on one thing at a time, though. Inevitable compromises occur when we try to multi-task. The ones who can set boundaries with their time and efforts will get more and better done in the long run.
Sources for this obsession with multi-tasking as a virtue (my theory) might have come from social expectations caused in part by
- women moving into the workforce and still trying to do all the at-home stuff;
- the “M-TV editing” effect in the 1980s that created expectations of rapidly shifting focus from one image to another, which was then reinforced by the way electronic tools like mobile devices and computers work, trying to con us into thinking we can do more, buy more to do more with, etc.;
- companies putting more and varied tasks on fewer workers to save on employment costs.
All of these social shifts have created a “value” around multi-tasking. Since we’re stuck with it, so to speak, we make it into a virtue. And it’s still not one. Just an excuse to overburden people with overwhelming expectations.
Resist! Set boundaries! Check email/phone three times a day instead of thirty (very hard for me, but I am doing it!). Real quality productivity will actually go up, I promise. I also promise you’ll love getting fully in the zone on some project and find out that the reason is the “silence” from your email and social media notifications (not to mention the turned-off phone). It really feels like a silence to me, this lack of interruptions. Plus I just get more billable or creative stuff done.
And you might actually have more time for surfing Pinterest pictures or taking a walk in the neighborhood later. You never know unless you try it!