Multitasking – Is it good or bad for you?
I work for a large bank and the message that comes down from all of our leaders is “we spend too much time in meetings, you should only attend those meeting which are important”. This is immediately followed by a statement about why all of the meetings they’ve arranged are important. So I spend about 8 hours a day in meetings.
Because I have a “real job” to also get done and because there are now a myriad of ways to stalk, I mean contact, you, I find myself dialing into a meeting on my phone or laptop and then trying to listen and contribute while at the same time responding to emails and answering texts and skype instant messages and writing to do lists (which includes calling all the people who’ve tried to phone me while I was in the meeting). And, I maybe shouldn’t admit, sometimes checking out social media or reading my personal emails.
If this sounds like you, you’ve probably wondered like I have whether this demonstrates that you are a champion at multi-tasking or totally destroying your ability to focus on anything. I used to think it was the former but lately, having found myself sometimes mindlessly scrolling through my phone or reading emails while chatting to friends (sorry!) or finding myself struggling to focus on a task for more than 10 minutes straight I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s much more likely it’s the latter.
So I started to doing some research (not while in meetings) and sadly it seems that multitasking it is doing more harm than good to our brains. And in some really bad news, multi-tasking becomes a lot harder and decreases our productivity even more as we age. Apparently we are way better at focusing on doing one thing at a time and doing it well.
So time to put down whatever else it was you were doing while reading this.
If you want to re-learn how to focus on one thing, this article has some simple, helpful tips starting off with admitting you have a multi-tasking problem. Your brain will thank you for it:
https://www.aia.com.au/en/individual/onelife/think-well/the-productive-power-of-monotasking.html
If you’re looking for other ways to keep your brain healthy as you age, try this article:
