A friend of mine who is a professional writer made this post on her writing website, www.thewomanwriter.com. I thought it was so good - for home based business owners, students, entrepreneurs…anyone who really needs to get the “most” from their time. Enjoy!
_______________________________________________________________________
One of my favorite email newsletters comes from Lifehacker. While a lot of their content goes ‘right over my head’ because I’m not a tech-oriented person, the newsletter for September 24th, 2010 really hit home. The Case for Single-Tasking: the One- Task-at-a-Time Method was a persuasive look at the importance of focused attention. Nicely written by the Senior Writer Jason Fitzpatrick, the article gave me (and now you) some great tips on weaning ourselves off of the habit of multi-tasking. His words echo those of many others who have bemoaned the habit. Just Google “multitasking” and you’ll find articles from National Public Radio, and The New Atlantis magazine, just to name two of the top 10 in the long list of search results.
The NPR article, Think You’re Multitasking: Think Again, shares this…”People can’t multitask very well, and when people say they can, they’re deluding themselves,” said neuroscientist Earl Miller. And, he said, “The brain is very good at deluding itself.” Miller, a Picower professor of neuroscience at MIT, says that for the most part, we simply can’t focus on more than one thing at a time. What we can do, he said, is shift our focus from one thing to the next with astonishing speed.
“Switching from task to task, you think you’re actually paying attention to everything around you at the same time. But you’re actually not,” Miller said. “You’re not paying attention to one or two things simultaneously, but switching between them very rapidly.”
Miller said there are several reasons the brain has to switch among tasks. One is that similar tasks compete to use the same part of the brain. “Think about writing an e-mail and talking on the phone at the same time. Those things are nearly impossible to do at the same time,” he said. “You cannot focus on one while doing the other. That’s because of what’s called interference between the two tasks,” Miller said. “They both involve communicating via speech or the written word, and so there’s a lot of conflict between the two of them.”
Here are some reflections on the joys of single-tasking, and some suggestions on how to release our “addiction” to multitasking.
It’s possible you’ve been multitasking so long you’ve forgotten what it’s like to fully dedicate yourself to one task. Let’s jog your memory to help you back on the road to single-tasking.
Single-tasking forces you to sustain your focus and work through complex problems. If you’re always jumping from email to IM to the web and then back through your list of workplace distractions, then you’re not taking the time to focus on problems that require persistent and complex thought.
Your stress levels will fall. Multitasking is stressful. The more you attempt to do things in parallel, the more energy you have to invest just in tracking your tasks and keep things straight. When you focus fully on one task, you can redirect much of the mental and physical energy you’ve been using up just keeping all the balls in the air towards more productive work.
You’ll get better at managing your time. When we talked about using timers to boost your productivity, we highlighted how timers can train you to be more honest with your time and assessments thereof. Singletasking imparts a similar ability; you’ll become better at identifying things that are effective and ineffective uses of your time. When you cut out the distractions and hone in on the work that is important to you, unimportant things that take you away from that work are easier to see.
You’ll get more done, one task at at time, than you could have even imagined when you were “multitasking.” Feeling a sense of completion is extremely satisfying. Imagine you’ve been tasked with felling a stand of trees. If you approach it by making three passes of the saw on each tree before moving onto the next. At the end of the day you won’t have cut down a single tree down. If you start with one tree and saw through until it’s done, you may not have left your mark on every tree that day, but you’ll have a pile of timber to show for your effort. When you cut out the crap that doesn’t matter and start sawing away at the important tasks, you may be surprised to see how quickly you make progress on them.
Jason agrees that “multitasking is so ingrained in the habits of most workers and workplace cultures it’s just the way things are. Cutting out distractions and focusing on one thing is really hard to do in many modern workplaces, but it’s worth the effort. If you need a little push in the right direction,” here are his suggestions.
Use the minimal tools necessary to effectively do your work. You can find inspiration for this idea in a an unusual place—the Amish. Most people assume the Amish shun technology. On closer inspection, however, the Amish don’t shun technology; they just operate from the default stance of “No.”. They only accept new things when those new things seem to be worth the hassle. Their dividing line may differ completely from ours, but we generally operate on the default of “Yes!”, accepting new tools and tech at a rapid clip. When you consider what you really need to get your work done, however, you’ll probably notice at least a few “tools” you can do without. Do you need a web browser open on your second monitor while you’re writing that memo? Do you need the second monitor at all? Can you ignore your email for a few hours? Shut down your IM software?
It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that we need to have our email open all the time, to have our IM client on in case somebody needs to reach us, to have web browser ready to go for those urgent things we need to do. Try operating from the standpoint of “I don’t need this unless it proves to be impossible to work without it.” You’ll quickly find that you need way fewer tools than you think you do. (If you feel like physical clutter is part of your problem, check their end-all guide to getting out from under your office crap.)
Do less. That doesn’t mean you should work less, not as hard, or sit there staring off in space just to cut down on your stress. Doing less is more about acknowledging that you can’t do everything, that every to-do list entry isn’t set in stone, and that it’s OK to say no. When people end up frantically multitasking, it’s often after they’ve realized there’s no conceivable way they will ever get everything on their to-do list done. If that hits a little close to home for you, it’s probably time to clean out your to-do list and brush up on maintaining a project list that doesn’t crush your soul.
Be candid about your single-tasking focus. People will initially be surprised at your commitment to multitasking, culturally we’re firmly entrenched in the idea of multitasking. If your boss asks you why you didn’t respond immediately to an email she sent you, tell her the truth: you closed your email client to give 100% of your attention to a project she had delegated to you earlier in the day. We’ve all gotten so used to not having the full focus of our bosses, coworkers, even friends, that it’s easy to forget how powerful it is to have and to give 100% focus.
In short: Prune your to-do list, focus on one task at a time, and knock them out one by one. Should you want some more insight into how to do this, Lifehacker has a great article about the subject.
o accomplish something is much easier if they have the inspiration to do so. Inspire literally means “to breathe life into.” And in order to perform that, we have to have some life ourselves. Three main actions will aid you in accomplishing this:
I hear it every day…”How can I get through this?” The definition of “this” differs for everyone…whether it’s no money, too much work, too little work, divorce, kids acting out…I always tell them “You can get through this.”
Mahatma Gandhi did. This is what he had to say about the subject…
Are you looking for some inspired ways to see life in a new way? I’ve recently made a favorite ebook available - Albert Mensah’s Favorite Folktales: Changing Your Life through the Wisdom of African Folktales. 
During lunch break at work, the Mullah was getting exasperated. Every time he opened his lunchbox, it was a cheese sandwich. Day after day, week after week, it was the same - a cheese sandwich.