Focus/No Multitasking
A lot of the strategies in the Happiful program are designed to help you Focus on only one thing at a time. You simply can’t be effective trying to do more than one thing at a time.
Scientists have proven that humans can’t actually multitask with anything that requires conscious thought. When you try to do two things at once, like reading your email while participating in a Zoom meeting, you are actually just switching your attention back and forth between the two things.
There are two important negative impacts of multitasking:
First, you are not paying attention to one of those two things. This is why texting while driving is so dangerous – while you are texting, your brain is actually 100% focused on texting and 0% on driving. You may have noticed that when you are talking with someone and they start reading a notification or email, they often stop mid-sentence until they finish reading because their brain has switched 100% to reading and 0% to talking.
The second negative is that every time you switch what you are paying attention to, you lose time from what is called “switching costs”. When you switch tasks, your brain is like a car being in neutral while it’s changing gears: you’re not going anywhere. And the more intellectually demanding the task, the longer it takes for you to get back up to speed.
The more you fragment your day by moving between tasks, the more switching costs you incur, so you want to have long blocks of uninterrupted time on a single task before moving on to something else. Multitasking is an extreme example of the opposite of this, with continuous switching costs.
In fact, research says that workers lose an average of 28% of their workday to multitasking ineffectiveness. Other studies have shown that people who attempt multitasking take 100% more time to complete tasks and they make 50% more errors. Research says that just talking on the phone while driving reduces your focus by 40% and has the same impact on your driving as being drunk.
Here are the specific actions to take to improve your focus and productivity:
The easiest and fastest step you should take toward improving your productivity and time management is very simple: turn off all notifications on your computer, tablet, and phone. This ends a huge source of distraction and greatly increases your focus. The only exception is to leave on your calendar notifications because these are the alerts you set up proactively.
Limit yourself to checking email as infrequently as possible. We’ll cover email in detail later on, but for now, exit out of email (and of course turn notifications off) and have a set schedule for when you check and respond to emails, perhaps 3 or 4 times a day. After each time, exit out of your email so it doesn’t tempt you to check it more frequently. To help you establish this habit, you can put recurring alerts in your calendar or set a timer on your phone for the desired interval.
Keep your phone upside down (or better yet, in a drawer or closet where you can’t even see it).
Commit to no more multitasking. It’s likely a habit that will take effort and discipline, but over time you can break the habit.
And it goes without saying: you should not spend even a minute of your workday on social media, online news, or any of the other modern distractions. Remember, you should have an exciting Vision of your ideal future life to motivate you to be productive and avoid wasting time. If you enjoy social media for entertainment and keeping in touch with friends, then make sure you limit using it to after your workday is done.