Have you ever try to do your tasks altogether? Like cooking while talking on the phone, like watching your favourite series of Korean drama while ironing the laundry? Or in the field of work and productivity, like taking notes while listening to the lecturer, like answering emails while attending online meeting? I’m pretty sure all of us been there done that. We always assumed, if we can do all the tasks altogether, so why not? It will reduce our work time, we can get more done with less of time, more over if we have deadline in front of our eyes, pressure is real! We tend to do multiple things at once. More over for a mom, sometimes good luck is not in our side, society like punish us too hard. We’re like forced to do some kind of supermom? In a short amount of time. Look at this picture :
Relate? Definitely. But honestly, only to see it makes my brain dizzy. In this complex world we are forced to become one of supermom. But the truth is, we only a regular mom, an ordinary mom, not super woman or supermom. It’s ok if you want to be supermom/ super woman and you happy with it, go ahead. But if you feel not ok and not happy, maybe there’s something wrong with the way we do it. If we used to do multiple tasks in one times, we called it multitasking. Yes, it’s very popular way to do all the tasks, and somehow, we feel satisfied and proud if we good at multitasking, because society told us so. But you know, even though we assumed it seems efficient, studies shows maybe it’s the time we have to leave it behind if you want to have simple life.
Recently, I read a book “Stolen Focus : Why You Can’t Pay Attention” by New York Best Selling Author, Johann Hari (it’s a great book, by the way!).Basically, he said, Today we live in a world full of complexity, and everything that builds that complexity seems to steal our focus. Our ability to pay attention, to concentrate is hijacked by various factors in the modern world, while we tend to blame ourselves for losing focus. And one of the factor aside of digital devices and social media, lack of sleep, unbalanced diets, etc is the myth of multitasking. I’m not an expert of self improvement, I’m only a reader, but I found it in so many books, they are agree, multitasking is not good. Why? The fact is, The human brain can only produce one or two thoughts in our conscious mind at a time. This is the basic structure of our brain and won’t change. But instead of admit it, we choose to create myth or fantasies about multitasking. What actually happen is, when we think we are multitasking, we are actually just “juggling”, just switching activities. We are not pay attention to this juggling, because our brain hides the real reality. And it will decreasing our ability to FOCUS.
Why? First, We have to re-configure our brain, when we have to switch from one task to the other, and it will cause our brain performance to decrease, we are becoming slower than before. Second, when we switching the task, a mistake which is not usually happens, will happens. Because our brain indeed is prone to make a mistake. It’s like our brain have to step back a little to understand and find out where our brain do the previous tasks. And our brain can’t do it perfectly, then this is the times when a problem occur. We don’t want it, right? Third, by doing multitasking, our brain become less creative significantly. Our thought and innovation comes from our brain which forms new connections from what we have seen, heard and learned before in a monotasking way. If we do multitasking, our brain is too much spending times processing the switching mode, correct the mistakes, and closing our brain opportunity to build new connections and to have new thoughts which is truly original and creative. Last, the harsh truth is, by doing multitasking, we can’t remember what we already done as good as doing one task at a time.
“Hi, are you still there? Yes? Thank You. Please bear with me.”
So what is the meaning all the explanation above? Here we goes, if we do multitasking, studies shows our performance become slower, makes more mistakes, less creative, and will remember less of what we done. And then, there is no other choice, if we want to do something better and optimally, carefully focus on one thing at a time. Be present. By doing one thing at a time, we won’t feel exhausted, not burn out, less stress, increasing our focus and will leading to better creativity and problem solving. Not to mention it, by doing one thing at a time, when it comes to happy and simple life, being fully present in one task we will feel whole experience and leads to increases enjoyment of activities and in the end it will helps us built better relationship with others.
Remember this my dear friends, we are not machine. We can’t live as a machine. We are human, and we works with a human way. Period.
Love,
Kirana Sidin
