Multitasking : good or bad?

 

Multitasking is it good or bad? There are so many things to do in a day! In variably you end up stepping on one foot or the other. But there is a way to get out of this endless baggage of things to do! Creating independent functioning individuals is our creation goal!
How do we achieve this?

Studies have shown that multitasking provides benefits in the beginning then the dis-advantages outweigh the troubles. As the diagram above if you are doing one task at a time you are giving 100% to it. At 2 tasks you are giving 50% give or take to the task. At 3 tasks you are giving < 50% to each task. At 4 tasks you are giving <25%. 

So why do we do it? Initial advantages suggest that you feel you are on steroids when you finish one task in the background while performing another task. The ego is boosted that you can finish quicker than others in the same amount of time. As the number of tasks increase the time to context switch your activities is more time consuming than doing the activity itself. 

How about combining listening to a podcast and writing a journal about it. That is not multitasking since you are doing what you started off doing. 

On the other hand listening to a conference while finishing an assignment is a tragic story. You have not paid attention to the speaker, neither have you written a correct assignment.

One task at a time has advantages: 

There are some known ways of doing this. 
1. Make a to-do list and strike them off
2.  Concentrate on one task and complete it fully.
3. Practice mindfullness to stick to one task.

What about watching TV while working on the computer? This is debatable. You can get some work done like checking emails, answering something that is not proirity one. Listening to music while working is a positive for some, since it helps them to shut out the outside noise. Doing serious priority one work requires no distraction!

So choose the tasks in which one is insignificant and the other is significant. You can limit the number of tasks to two always! More than two is a disaster waiting to happen! Never cook and multitask. Choosing tasks that complement each other is a good use of time!

Practice mindful techniques to focus. Listen always to podcasts and meeting and do not check messages until after the call or the meeting. Checking iphone messages and waiting to tweet or facebook are distractions that can be avoided completely!!! 

Priortize and attack the to-do list! 

Also read:https://www.verywellmind.com/multitasking-2795003#:~:text=Multitasking%20seems%20like%20a%20great,by%20as%20much%20as%2040%25.


















Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Wagging your way out of the pandemic!

Image
  What an year that was 2020? 2021 whew! Glad we are still alive and well.  Come March 2021 and it will be an year of excruciating pain and mixed emotions for all the happenings through the year! First there was the pandemic announcement and then there is the Work From Home (WFH) change. That was a bigger problem than the pandemic. Having a timetable to walk through the day worked for some weeks, some weeks were completely ad-hoc! Having lunches and dinners took a different personality already! We started having lunches and dinners at different times based on the time we woke up and what each person was feeling on that day! Co-ordinating school schedules, class schedules for the kids and the elderly in the house is a job by itself. Having meetings when the kids are in school is a positive, however the kids lose out on the coaching from parents. We had zoom meetings crash in the middle of the meeting and the kids running all around, pets walking by the camera! We survived all through th
Read more

The conundrum of living a meaningful life

Image
 The conundrum of living a meaningful life We are always striving to live a better life, serving a higher purpose in the process. Engineering and arts are very similar in their professions. There is always a chance of branching out in a new direction. You can carve your niche in different ways in both the fields. First there is the necessity to earn a living. If earning a living can also bring in fun that would be wonderful! But there are so many obstacles in that path. It is never too easy to walk on glass pieces with a smile! We have to pull our courage and strength together to get through this portion. Lots of management skills are developed as we try to balance the home and the work life and the process of earning a living and having it all! No wonder you see so many people having it all and pulling it through. Moving forward and pushing through all the obstacles is the only way out of this tunnel. But there is one sacrifice that people make in the process that is the happiness in
Read more

Responsive vs Reactive

Image
 What is the difference you may ask? But there is a huge difference. Responsiveness includes fore-thinking and planning for any such event that happens in the future. If a natural calamity happens and you have supplies ready that is responsiveness. Being responsive is a great trait for all the leaders to have in the face of calamity. You react first then provide appropriate response to the task in hand. Reactiveness is taking action after the event has happened. If a building collapses and then rescue team comes and helps the people that is reactiveness. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, the Newton's third law. If you react to all the actions that are happening around you, you will only be reacting and forget to take action. Same with life, taking action is important rather than reacting. Reaction is the first response to an event, but responsiveness is preparing for future events of the same type. Be reactive at first, but responsive in the long run! 
Read more