Multitasking

Or is it?

Mini laptops, smartphones, and any other gadgets should aid small business owners. However, if you look more closely to your daily activities, you might surprise yourself how unproductive you are with the all-available “productivity tools.”

How come?

Human is not designed to multitask

Here’s a newsflash to all of us the small business owners: Human is not designed to do multiple things at one time. Here is the scientific research that proves just that.

From the article above, it has been a long-gone conclusion that people simply can’t multitask. What people do are actually shifting their attention from one thing to another at a very rapid pace.

Checking your emails with your Blackberry while having your lunch with your colleagues are only giving your brain a hard time. And yes, researchers can actually see the brain struggling with the flood of information and focus-hopping activities you do.

In fact, you’ll end up being unproductive, wasting your time and energy to do the shifting focus you might not realise while multitasking. Eventually, you could do more mistakes, more counter-productive decision making, and more tired than you are supposed to.

How can business owners really be productive

You and I have got to stop multitasking. Yes, it’s in our habit and a norm in our busy, busy life, but a small change could do you good.

Here’s the best thing that you and I can do to be more productive: Eliminate those “multitasking” habits and do one thing at a time. Set up a schedule that allows you to put “do not disturb sign” in a certain time of the day. During that period, arrange your daily tasks in such a way that they can be done one at a time.

More tips: When having lunch, stop checking your phones. Or if you are super-busy type of business person, you would be better of taking a 10-minute break just for you to enjoy your meal without work distraction – Multiple small breaks work wonder in my case (And, oh, don’t forget to take a 20-minute nap whenever possible; It will boost your mental and physical energy throughout the rest of the day – This tip is courtesy of Eben Pagan…)

While in the middle of breaking your multitasking habit, you will be surprised how we can perform better without multitasking.

Ivan Widjaya
Stop multitasking
Image by eflon