The Seattle Times had a nice article about multitasking called, Multitasking Hurts The Brain’s Ability To Focus, Scientists Say. The title kind of gives away the gist of the article, but it talked about how our tech society is changing the workforce and altering our brains. Every one of us thinks that we’re multitasking rock stars, but every article that I read on the subject seems to say that that is not true. We’re multitasking ourselves into ineffectiveness. Today, I’ll focus on two of the consequences and five antidotes to multitasking.
2 consequences of multitasking
- Important stuff doesn’t get done and important people get ignored. The article talked about the power of the chime…you know the one. It lets you know when you have an email or a text or a Facebook message. The chime is so powerful that you will stop doing work that is interesting, important, and required of you just to see what’s behind it. Think about the number of work stoppages each of those chimes represents and you’ll see why you get to the end of your day and wonder why nothing’s gotten accomplished. And if your family is used to playing second fiddle to the chime, that’s bound to be a topic of intense convo in the future.
- You get stressed out because of too much information. What if all of those chimes represented something that you’ve got to do…a “to-do” list item? I think that it would get a little overwhelming. It used to be that when you went home, you didn’t know what emails came to you after hours. Now we find out right away…and to an extent that’s good. But that just means we can never shut off our brains from what needs to be done. And it all seems important…even when it’s not.
5 ways to combat technology and regain control of your life
- Silence your phone. And put it out of site. Amazingly enough, those Facebook messages aren’t life or death…and they’ll still be there later. Even if it’s just for an hour at a time, that’ll be a super productive hour!
- Set time limits. Maybe you say that you won’t turn the computer on before breakfast and it has to be turned off by nine o’clock at night. Whatever your parameters, it’s good to have an idea of what’s tech time and what’s connect with actual human beings time.
- Have a desire to get offline. One of the subjects of the article says that he has to battle the pull of his iPhone…he says that he has to work to suppress the urge to constantly check his phone. And that’s the key: wanting to be present and focused on what’s happening now and not only what’s happening in the computer or in your phone.
- Be a thinker. I wrote an article about leadership (Take These 3 Steps To Become An Effective Leader) that talked about multitasking being counter to thinking. Meaning that we become so focusing on doing, doing, doing which keeps us from thinking and being innovative.
- Organize your day. In 4 Rock Solid Ways To Get More Stuff Done, I talked about how to manage your time through organization. The tips were: create to-do lists, do the stuff you don’t want to do first, put time limits on activities, and focus (which talked about the distracting chime!).
Give it a whirl and see what you think…and hopefully you weren’t checking your phone and email while you were reading this!
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