Doing more than one thing at once - your brain just can't do it!

Life rushes by at such a pace and we are often tempted to do more than one thing at once. We call it multitasking and some people are proud of their ability to multitask. But multitasking doesn't really exist. You're not doing lots of things at once. You are rapidly, and ineffectively, switching between different activities very quickly. 

The powerful computer I am writing this article on seems like it is doing lots of things at once. But it's an illusion. The computer has four brains (otherwise known as a quad core processor) so can, in theory, do four things at once but it's power is the ability to switch quickly and seamlessly from one thing to another. If it does 'too much' of this switching then it overheats.

If I do too much of the switching I will get very stressed, rather ineffective and unless I heed the warning signals more than likely burn out (nice term, we used to call it a nervous breakdown). And the bottom line is I won't have been paying sufficient attention to anything in particular to have got anything important done.

A Stanford University study shows just why multitasking doesn't work in practice.

So why not enjoy your day and experience by doing one thing at once. Read the book, write the report or (gosh!) just listen to the person in front of you and pay full attention to what they are saying. And give up reading your email whilst you're on the phone to someone else... it's not big, it's not clever and you might just miss something important.

"True productivity means completing things of quality – not simply doing lots of things at the same time and completing very little." - Jim Benson

"The key to just doing anything is not doing everything else"