These days, people treat multitasking like it’s a special talent; if you’re good at doing multiple things at once then that must make you a valuable and productive worker, right? Actually, that’s completely wrong.


Multitasking isn’t making us more productive; in fact, it’s doing exactly the opposite. According to INC, multitasking leads us to:

  • a 40% drop in productivity
  • 50% more time taken to accomplish a single task
  • 50% more errors made while doing that task

So even though it may feel like you’re accomplishing more (because you’re working on more than one thing), you’re actually losing quite a bit of productivity when you focus on more than one thing at a time.

 

The Curse of Creativity

So many of us who lean toward the creative side of things seem drawn to multitasking. It’s not as much fun to focus on one thing at a time when there are so many (new! shiny!) distractions everywhere! Even in our personal hobbies, we often have multiple projects going at any given time, because it’s more interesting to start something new than to slog through something you’ve been working on for a while.

Context Switching

Though we often refer to it as multitasking, the real culprit here is context switching. The idea is that your brain is moving back and forth between thought processes or activities, even if technically you’re only working on one thing. For example: you’re writing a blog post, but your phone dings in the middle of it to let you know you’ve got a message on Facebook, so you stop to check that, and while you’re there you see an ad for those new shoes you’ve been wanting, and by the time you look at the clock you realize you’ve just wasted 30 minutes doing nothing at all.

Do you frequently find yourself jumping from one thing to the next, or are you able to remain focused on one task until it’s as complete as it can be in the moment? Read on for tips on how to increase your productivity by eliminating context switching from your daily routine.

Tips to Minimize Context Switching

  1. Block out your time. Set aside time for the things that take up time in your day: work tasks, personal or home-related tasks, and even things like checking email or browsing social media. You may tell yourself you’re “not going to check Facebook” during your working time, but let’s face it: you’re doing it anyway. By setting aside “Facebook time” on your calendar, you’re giving yourself permission to do that activity, but during the appropriate time for it.
  2. Keep your To Do list short. On any given day, you should have a list of no more than three important tasks you want to complete that day. By doing this you can give yourself the time you need to really devote your attention to those tasks, but if you overload your list with too many To Dos, you’ll feel tempted to work on them simultaneously or to switch between them before really completing anything, just to be able to say you worked on each item that day.
  3. Turn off the distractions. Our phones are like a window to the world outside, but they’re also a pipeline to distraction. You don’t NEED to be notified of every social media post, email, or even text message at any given minute of the day. If there’s a real emergency, someone will pick up the phone and actually call you. Turn off notifications on your phone during working hours, and make sure you don’t have any alerts on your computer.
  4. Get off the Internet. Having multiple tabs open while you’re working makes it too easy to just “click over for a minute” to check on a website that might distract you from your work. Cut out random Internet browsing during your work time. If you need to maintain a social media presence for your business, try to remember that you’re there for business – post to your own profile or group, but don’t get distracted reading other peoples’ posts.
    Bonus “hack” for Facebook: set your Facebook page up so that it only shows you the groups you’re using for work or business, and hides all your personal feeds. That way you can check in for work and check back out again without getting distracted by photos of your best friend’s baby or your cousin’s dinner plate.

What’s the biggest “distraction trap” for you when you’re trying to be productive? Just knowing the answer to that question is the first step in avoiding that distraction in the future!

Would you like to train yourself to focus on what’s most important, and to work on the things that make the most difference in your life and business?

Join us in May for the Small Biz Book Club, where we’ll be reading Greg McKeown’s book, Essentialism. You’ll get a lot of great insights on how to improve your productivity and reduce distraction. Click here for all the details, or sign up using the box below: