Multitasking Kills Productivity

We live in a world where much is demanded of us than ever before and as result we turn to productivity to experts to help us cram as much as we can into our daily lives. In consideration of the pace we run our lives at, we turn to multitasking to become more efficient in a shorter amount of time. Multitasking is often considered the holy grail of productivity; it is said to allow multiple task executed simultaneously, thus allowing for greater efficiency is a shorter amount of time. One of the greatest pitfalls associated with multitasking is overestimating your ability to get a certain number of tasks completed in an allocated amount of time. Are our minds capable of such a task? Are there any associated risks with multitasking? Is multitasking the most efficient way of getting things done? What are our other options?

Multitasking is does not kill productivity if you are doing two things at once; for instance, washing a car while listening to the radio, but your chances of recalling the music or interviews because you are focusing upon the first task of washing the car.

Multitasking does not come naturally; consider how many sports exist that involves only one ball and how many of those players perform one single task. Consider how many insurance claims are made every year in relation to someone misjudging the space between their own car and another in front, and consequently running up back of the car all due to texting, emailing or another form of multitasking while behind the wheel of a car.

The human mind is not equipped with the necessary requirement for coping with multitasking that requires concentration as well as consideration, and short term memory can only store between five to nine pieces of information at any given time. Even if you are trying to accomplish two dissimilar tasks that both require attention as well as consideration, your multitasking abilities will fall apart and inevitably resulting in a lack of encoding into your short-term memory. The human mind cannot absorb or process two simultaneous streams of information and directly encode it into your short-term memory. If information is not encoded into the short term memory it cannot be impressed into your long term memory inevitably the information cannot be recalled, thus wasting your time and effort.

Multitasking is a source of stress. Frequent interruptions are a by-product of multitasking, which can lead to a sense of urgency, which in turn produces mental pressure.