Why Multitasking is More than Just Inefficient

Editors Note: This is a guest post from Vin Miller of Natural Bias
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Have you ever had a great idea that you were unable to recall after switching your focus to another subject? This is actually quite common, and whether you’re aware of it or not, it’s one of the many consequences and frustrations of multitasking. Unfortunately, the disadvantages of multitasking go much deeper than the frustration of losing a good idea.
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Multitasking is a Source of Stress
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As a reader of Advanced Life Skills, you probably already know that humans are inherently bad at multitasking and that it’s a poor strategy for productivity. What you might not realize is that multitasking and frequent interruptions are sources of stress that can have a notable impact on your health and wellbeing.
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Despite the fact that multitasking is generally regarded as a bad thing by most personal development experts, research has shown that multitasking can increase productivity to some extent which is a likely a result of the mental pressure and sense of urgency that it imposes. However, this pressure is a form of stress and will invoke the physiological stress response. As such, frequent multitasking is a form of chronic stress that over time will promote physical breakdown of your body and compromise your health.
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Multitasking and focus
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The human mind works best when focusing on a single thread of thoughts. When we try to focus on multiple unrelated thoughts at the same time, whether by choice or as a result of being interrupted, it becomes difficult to regain focus and remember where we left off. This can be quite frustrating, especially when facing the pressure of a deadline.
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Even if multitasking does increase productivity, it’s not sustainable as a long term strategy and the benefits would be short lived. Over time, as the resulting stress accumulates and impairs your health, fatigue and mental fogginess will become more prominent, and both productivity and mood will likely decline.
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Why Stress is Dangerous to Your Personal Development
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Although there are many aspects of personal development, I consider the most important and foundational ones to be development of character, awareness of values, and pursuit of fulfillment. Without a doubt, these aspects require a lot of dedication and effort. While health is often addressed as a subtopic of personal development, I think too few people appreciate the influence that optimal health can have on the emotional balance, mental clarity, energy, and motivation needed to maximize personal growth.
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With the busy lifestyle that many of us live, the stress of multitasking is very common. However, this is certainly not the only lifestyle factor that can compromise your health, and in turn, your ability to pursue personal development. As such, it’s important to embrace a well rounded lifestyle that supports health just as much as it supports productivity and mental advancement. After all, you can be in excellent health without having any direction or emotional stability in your life, or you can be in full control of your emotions while being limited by chronic health problems. Why not pursue the best of both worlds?
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Use Your Values to Reduce the Stress of Multitasking
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I’m sure most of you are well aware of the importance of knowing your core values and staying congruent with them. However, even for those of us who fully embrace the importance of our values, it’s easy to lose focus of them while engaged in our daily activities. It’s easy to postpone the important but difficult tasks that will help us grow and stay congruent with our values in favor of easier tasks and entertaining distractions. The result is often an empty feeling of not having accomplished our goals for the day which often leads to frustration, stress, and motivation to multitask in order to make up for lost time.
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Who you are today is the culmination of the many small decisions you’ve made each day throughout your life. If there’s a difference between who you are today and who you want to be years from now, you’ll need to make sure that as many of your future decisions as possible are congruent with your goals. The only way this will happen is if you regularly prioritize the tasks that will be most influential in bringing you closer to your goals and give them the dedicated and uninterrupted attention that they deserve.
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Avoiding the Stress of Multitasking
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The following 5 tips are designed to help you reduce your perceived need to multitask.
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1) Each morning, prepare a task list for the day and prioritize the tasks by importance in relation to your goals and values. Focus on the most important ones first and leave the less important tasks for another day if you run out of time for them.
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2) Get to work on your most important tasks early in the day so that you don’t run out of time.
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3) If you’re working on a computer, close down all windows that aren’t necessary for the task at hand, especially things like email, Twitter, Facebook, instant messenger, etc.
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4) If possible, shut off your cell phone for a while to avoid unnecessary interruption.
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5) Work in an environment that is conducive to focus. If necessary, isolate yourself from people who might unnecessarily interrupt or distract you.
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Supporting Your Personal Development with Optimal Health
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Striving for simplicity is a significant part of personal development for many people, including myself. If you’re not a health nut, the last thing you want is to complicate your life with the inconvenience of implementing healthier habits. To an extent, this additional burden is part of the required commitment to reaching your potential.
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Resource: Living a healthy lifestyle is not nearly as complicated or laborious as some people make it out to be. If you’d like to learn more about a natural and common sense based approach to living a healthy lifestyle, I suggest that you take advantage of my free course 7 Simple Steps to a Leaner, Happier, and Healthier You!
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…Vin Miller writes about maximizing life through health, fitness, and perspective.
…You can read more from Vin at his blog Natural Bias
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How do you feel about multitasking?
Does it increase stress or help you get more done?
The lines are open!
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