Many people think that multitasking is very productive but in reality it is productive only in Hollywood movies where person works on multiple keyboard together and finish tasks in no time.
When you try to do more than one task at a same time, is called multitasking. Problem is, when you do 2 tasks together, you will keep switching context between those tasks. Your brain takes time to ramp-up and focus on given task, so more you switch between tasks, more you will waste your time. Ultimately it hits your productivity and these tasks take forever to finish.
Think about this way, you are trying to focus to write a piece of code, suddenly a mail comes in your inbox. You will stop writing code and switch to inbox. You will read email, probably answer that email and come back to code editor. If mail reading and writing took 15 minutes, you actually lost around 30 – 40 minutes. Because you need to make focus again, you will read code piece again to figure out where were you and what you were trying to implement and how. Now you are 30 minutes behind from your schedule because of one email and you will end up sitting late in office or working late night to deliver your estimated work.
As discussed about focus in my previous blog How to be more productive, you should pick only one task at a time and focus on that only. You will see that tasks has been finished in estimated time and you feel more productive.
Batching the Work
All tasks which are small in nature, should be batched to work. For example, you need to setup meeting with team members to discuss design or requirement. Keep all those meeting one after other, so that you know that rest of time, you can focus on some other bigger piece of work to finish. Otherwise you will keep switching context between meeting and at the end of day you will be able to finish only meetings, but other work will be pending to finish either via late night work or will be pushed for next day.
So batching helps to save time which waste while switching context between tasks. Identify these tasks in your daily routine and batch them. Few examples can be:
- Scheduling or attending meetings
- Emails reading and writing
- Phone calls
Mind Tasks First
While setting your day schedule, try to schedule mind tasks first in day. Usually, we feel tired by evening, so if you will plan mind tasks first and rest works like attending meetings, emails for later in day, you will feel good and more productive.
When Multitasking is Good
What, multitasking is good? Few minutes ago, you convinced me that multitasking is bad. Hold on, stay with me, I believe I will be able to convince you here.
Multitasking is good when you are mixing mind tasks and mindless tasks together. For example, I listen audio books while doing exercise. I do not need to use my brain on treadmill so I multitask that time to listen audio books. You may see many developers use headphone to listen music while writing code.
So you need to identify mind tasks and mix them with mindless tasks. Do not try to mix 2 brain tasks together, that multitasking will not work. Think that you are writing a code and listening audio book. Neither you will be able to focus on code nor on audio book.
If you are convinced that multitasking is usually bad, Please see your daily routines and
- Cut your multitasking which are not true multitasking
- Combine mindless work with mind work to boost productivity.