I was in a meeting discussing things that I do not care about so I decided to fiddle around with my Blackberry. I opened my inbox and decided to respond to a client. I know it is rude but I just had to maximize my time.
Multitasking, if you like, is the buzzword today. It is the buzzword among business executives. Accomplishing more in a limited time span is something that everyone must know how to do. Or is it?
Well, the bad thing is when it came to me to respond to a question of the chair of the company, I realized I had not heard the question as I was busy replying to messages in my inbox. I wanted to ask him to repeat the question but I did not want to give the chair the impression that I was not in full attention to what was being discussed. I took the cue from the topic thread and tried to give my opinion about the proposed brochure printing design. I rattled off until my colleague nudged me to tell me that we have moved on to another topic. I was embarrassed but I tried to salvage the situation. This is the danger of multitasking.
Studies showed that people distracted by incoming email and phone calls saw a 10-point fall in their IQs. How does a 10-point drop in an IQ equate to? It is no different to losing one night of sleep. I bet you have experienced this before – up all night and working the following day. I bet you could not even get your brain to start even a sentence.
Doing several things at once is something we play on ourselves to get more things done. However, in reality, our productivity goes down by as much as 40%. We do not actually multitask. We switch-task, that is, we rapidly shift from one thing to another, interrupting ourselves unproductively, and losing time in the process.
You might think you are wired differently and that you have done it so much you have mastered the art of multitasking. Practice, they say, makes perfect and all that. Nevertheless, this is not exactly true. Research shows that heavy multitaskers are less competent at doing several things at once than light multitaskers. In other words, in contrast to almost everything else in your life, the more you multitask, the worse you are at it. Practice, in this case, works against you.
Allow me to cite several negative consequences of multitasking.
First, multitasking disengages you from people. Like the time I was in a meeting, I started to lose touch with those in the conference table as soon as I started responding to the inbox in my Blackberry. You suddenly shut off from the ‘real’ people and start engaging those who are virtually present. It is much more delightful when you stop multitasking when you are with your family. I mean, if you are with them, shut off your cell phone or Blackberry and spend your time with them. You will notice that the interactions are much more engaged.
Second, multitasking prevents you from taking on the challenging work, the kind that – like writing or strategizing — require deep thought. When you multitask, like answering phone calls while you are deep in thought, you lose everything that you have been composing or thinking about. Imagine designing print brochures when suddenly the phone rings. Your thought processes suddenly stop to attend to another task. This is very much counterproductive. You might think that you have attended to an important call while working on your brochure printing design but little do you realize that you had to work more to get back on track to what you were doing before the call.
Third and most importantly, multitasking raises your stress level. Research shows that multitasking is not just efficient, it can also be stressful. Imagine trying to work on something to beat a deadline when suddenly an important email comes in that requires your attention. The situation then becomes a challenge on whether you should work on what is urgent or what is important. That is stressful.
These are the reasons why I would suggest we avoid multitasking. We will be more productive than what we thought of when we try to do so many things at one time.