Not multitasking at work can be difficult to stop, especially when there is a lot on your plate. Luckily, there are a few simple and conscious changes you can make to work even more efficiently.
Rather than bouncing back and forth between tasks every other minute or so, dedicate chunks of time to a certain task. A common workplace task that will challenge this strategy is checking email. Studies show the average professional spends about 23 percent of the day emailing. Inspired by that statistic, Gloria Mark of the University of California, Irvine, and her colleague Stephen Voida studied an office, cut off 13 employees from email for five days, strapped heart monitors to their chests, and tracked their computer use.
The employees ended up being less stressed when cut off from email. They focused on one task for longer periods of time and switched screens less often, thereby minimizing multitasking, and working efficiently.
Single-tasking on an individual level seems easy enough, but what happens when a team is involved? Multitasking with a group of coworkers creates a higher chance of miscommunication, missed deadlines, and poor work quality. If everyone in the group is distracted, there is little to no chance of coming together and producing the best work possible.
Productivity will skyrocket if the group focuses their attention on one task. They will be able to come together and devote themselves towards the work. By creating blocks of time for different tasks you have a better chance staying productive and on schedule towards completion. Lastly, with fewer platforms being used, each member will have less transition time between tasks, keeping them in a productive mindset.
Create a work model for your team based on organization, communication, and simplicity for the best productivity. Next time you find yourself juggling simultaneous assignments at work, stop multitasking. Give your full attention to one project at a time and you will find your quality of work and efficiency increase greatly. Multitasking undermines our efficiency, study suggests. This can increase your cognitive load. You need to employ attention, working memory and executive function, and the harder the tasks are, the more likely you are to exceed your limit.
Then your performance will suffer. Many studies over the years have found that in general people are slower and less accurate when they do two tasks at once. When people were given a tough deadline, they are forced to narrow their options and to make decisions which are cognitively less complex.
This in turn decreases the hangover from that first task, allowing them to put it behind them and get on with the next job. Multi-tasking is hardest when the tasks are similar to each other, but a bit easier if they are different. If the tasks are different enough then multi-tasking can even improve your performance. A study conducted in at the University of Florida surprised even its authors.
People were asked to sit on exercise bikes and to cycle for two minutes at a speed they found comfortable. Later they cycled again, this time with a screen in front of them which presented them with 12 different types of cognitive tests, some of them quite hard. They completed similar cognitive tests while sitting on a chair in a room and the researchers compared the results. This is a case where distraction seems to be useful. The authors speculate that anticipation of the tasks might have increased arousal in the brain, which also made the people more efficient at cycling.
This special group was discovered quite by accident by psychologists at the University of Utah. They spotted what they thought must be a mistake in their data — one person who was just as good at driving, whatever the distractions. Two people in every hundred are supertaskers, able to divide their concentration effortlessly without their performance suffering. The same psychologists found that the better people believed they were at multi-tasking, the worse they performed on a test which required them to memorise a list of words while also doing maths problem.
Multitasking in the workplace most often involves switching back and forth between tasks and effectively performing different tasks rapidly one right after the other. For example, answering the phone in a busy reception area in between greeting patients or answering emails demonstrates multitasking skills. Multitasking skills are important because they create an efficient work environment.
Here are the advantages of multitasking:. Multitasking consists of many skills that you should develop to be a more productive professional. Here are the most common skills required for multitasking:. Great multitasking involves knowing exactly what tasks you need to complete and when to complete them. Organizing includes managing your day, week and month to keep you on track with your tasks. Keep your workspace tidy so you can always find the paperwork, notes and other documents you need right away.
Similarly, organize your computer system and files to easily search and access documents. Prioritization is the ability to assess your responsibilities and organize tasks in terms of importance to manage your time. Prioritizing may mean completing the most simple items first and spending the rest of your time on larger, more complicated tasks. It could also mean beginning with the most time-sensitive tasks, then finishing up with less important tasks.
Regardless of how you choose to prioritize, the ability to maximize your time by creating order is a necessary skill for effective multitasking. Scheduling involves planning your time to ensure you meet deadlines and goals. It is the ability to take complex situations and break them down into manageable steps and deadlines.
By planning your day-to-day activities, and accounting for unexpected tasks, you decide where you can multitask to stay on schedule. Delegation is when you ask others to help you complete tasks to stay on schedule. When you delegate, you usually give smaller tasks to team members so you can focus on those with a higher priority. Delegation relates closely to scheduling and prioritization.
Good multitasking requires knowing when you have enough work and maintaining boundaries to manage your time. Follow these steps to help you improve your multitasking skills:. Create a plan of action by making a daily to-do list. You need to have a clear list of what you need to complete for the day so you can stay focused.
At the beginning of each workday, spend 10 to 15 minutes listing tasks on a notepad. Break larger tasks down into smaller steps. Once you create a list of tasks to complete, reorganize your list by highest priority to lowest. To decide which tasks are high priority and which are low priority, place your tasks into the following categories:.
After you have organized and prioritized your tasks, group together similar tasks. Multitasking usually involves working on similar duties, so grouping them together can increase your efficiency. This also might mean combining tasks that require the same actions, such as working on social media campaigns for three different accounts. By working on related tasks, you can increase your concentration. Distractions affect multitasking by reducing your ability to focus.
Ways to eliminate distractions include:.
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