Why is less multitasking more?

"The closest I get to multitasking is ignoring more than one thing at a time."

Women are inclined to care about everyone, every detail of the many tasks they have, they would like to see that all is in order and believe they are good at multitasking. We are even proud to possess this skill and we say it is a must.

Would you be hired for a job if you were not good at multitasking? How would you handle all the juggling tasks in life without needing to do things at the same time?  

We are convinced we can get more done and are more productive by multitasking.

Taking phone calls when driving and writing notes at the same time. My common evening practice is cooking, helping or controlling homework, making a shopping list and sometimes reading an article all in a short period of time. Multitasking at work can be as bad with more pressure to achieve more.

Looking for balance is fun. Spending time thinking about how we can improve our unbalanced aspects of life.  

Recent research has shown that there is a misperception of multitasking and it often has a cost of reducing productivity.

If we often switch from one task to another it is difficult to tune out distractions, we lose focus and  our brain slows down our progress.  

According to some studies those who frequently do many things at the same time, the so-called "heavy multitaskers” think they are probably good at this activity. The process is however, that first we decide to do something else instead of another and then because of the change we need to alter the rules of doing the previous task to different rules of the new task. If we then keep on switching back and forth, the process slows down, our productivity decreases. 

So maybe it is worth slowing down and checking in our daily schedule how many times are we multitasking, and how ”heavy multitaskers” we are. Are we really achieving our goals and do we need to do all those tasks at the same time? How can we do things in a different way and maybe not do some of it at all?  Maybe it is simply better for our well being and our poductivity to focus on one task at a time. Less is more.

Read more on the topic of multitasking:

www.about.com  
www.psychCentral.com
www.inc.com  
www.newageeconomy.com