Stop multitasking! It's killing your mental health and productivity

Multitasking means half-heartedly doing multiple things simultaneously, at the cost of quality, concentration, wellbeing, and presence.

In our societal hunt for productivity, we follow a dangerous misbelieve: More is always better. Given the fact that our time is limited, we're trying to squeeze in as much as possible:

- Cooking while working

- Doing laundry while working

- Watching youtube while eating

- Working on task 1 while thinking about task 2

- Listening to a podcast or audiobook while going for a walk

- etc.

Not only does that interfere with our ability to concentrate. In fact, multitasking doesn't even exist!

Our brains can't concentrate on 2 things at the same time. "Multitasking" is nothing more than rapidly switching between 2 tasks, which is both draining and inefficient.

But that's not the main problem here. The risk of multitasking is that we constantly feel that we are not doing enough. It is a rabbit hole of unsatisfied desires and insufficiency that we are getting dragged into.

Let's say you combine listening to your favorite music - a form of relaxation - with your working time. You might say that this is efficient: "I'm getting 2 things done at the same time!" But I bet that looking back, you feel you did neither.

You will have the feeling that you neither worked concentrated nor had free time - because you didn't! By combining them, you pursue both things unconsciously.

The definition of efficiency is to "achieve your results by putting the resources you have in the best way possible." In the sense of a job or life on a broader spectrum, the resource is time, and the results are the outcome of your work and the happiness you experience daily.

For both, multitasking is the killer by stealing your ability of concentration, presence, and consciousness.

I wrote this not because I am a productivity guru - I'm not.

But because I mostly push myself too hard and fall into the toxic habit of multitasking that I lay out here.

Do you multitask?

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