Should we quit with multi-tasking?

99% published results of feedback they received from their audience on how their audience are adapting their productivity regimes to be better/faster and smarter. The results show that people are choosing more often single productivity than multi-tasking.

ok, great so people are focusing more on the ONE task at the time now but what about the distraction factors which are all around us? What should we do to stay focus? ohh right, 99% audience suggested some tools we might use to help us stay focus, e.g.: momento, pomodoro technique

We have to start learn how to focus on one task at the time and deal with it not letting other things (like Facebook, email, Twitter, etc.) to distract us…at least for 30min. 🙂

…and of course people are giving some tips how to do that: that we should work in a ‘airplane mode’ – when you can’t use your mobile nor email. That will FORCE you to focus on a task. ok, that might works, but how to give up the mobile for 30min? can you do that?

Did you know that there are several applications which can help you to stay away from using internet during the time when you should work on something else? Yes there are – e.g. selfcontrol and freedom

I am wondering about another statement I read there: “everyone is experimenting with ways to and recharge when they’re away from their desks.”
…and guess what – probably there are tons of apps to help you with that…..but how about not using any applications?
What’s wrong with the old fashion “just turn off mobile, close all internet tabs and do what you have to do” ??? One thing at a time as much as possible!

There are more and more people who are trying to get back to old days when we were talking to each other face-to-face and not sitting next to each other still typing on cell phones.

Tony Schwartz during the SXSW conference (March 2010) said to the audience that they should ‘go to bed earlier’ but how to do that when there are so many thing around us? He is suggesting to simply ‘say no’ to many things which we don’t need in our lives. We have to say NO, we have to delegate more things, eliminate –to help ourselves. Tony suggests to create ‘NOT TO DO LIST” — almost everyone has a ‘to do list’ so why not create the other one and save some time and energy?

According to article by Paul Atchley in the Harvard Business Review “the Conversation” – Human beings aren’t designed to do two cognitive tasks at the same time:

Based on over a half-century of cognitive science and more recent studies on multitasking, we know that multitaskers do less and miss information. It takes time (an average of 15 minutes) to re-orient to a primary task after a distraction such as an email. Efficiency can drop by as much as 40%. Long-term memory suffers and creativity — a skill associated with keeping in mind multiple, less common, associations — is reduced.

Isn’t that funny that we are trying to get back to something which was already working (in the past) but we thought there are better things to do with all that Hi-Tech gadgets? wow! is it time to get back to the past? – when we actually were talking to our friends and ohhhh….we were writing letters and using the snail-mail?!!!!!!!!! wow! really?

so??? lets SLOW DOWN – because it will help us to speed up with good work 😉

===============
Paul Atchley, Ph.D. is an associate professor of Cognitive Psychology at the University of Kansans
Tony Schwartz, President and CEO of The Energy Project