The blog

For you who pre­fer lis­ten­ing to read­ing, this post is also avail­able as an episode of the ““Done!”” pod­cast:

What dri­ves multitasking?

How­ev­er, there are fair­ly sim­ple tricks you can use to reduce the dev­as­tat­ing mul­ti­task­ing. In a study, researchers Szu­mows­ka and Kruglan­s­ki look at what caus­es mul­ti­task­ing and what you can do about it. The results of a series of exper­i­ments sug­gest that:

• the more to-do tasks par­tic­i­pants want­ed to com­plete dur­ing the day, the more they mul­ti­tasked (that is, the short­er the time they worked on each task before switch­ing to another)
• the more par­tic­i­pants were inter­rupt­ed in their work, the more they mul­ti­tasked — espe­cial­ly if what inter­rupts is both noisy and visible
• if par­tic­i­pants select­ed one of the tasks and decid­ed it was more impor­tant to com­plete dur­ing the day, they mul­ti­tasked less — even if the num­ber of tasks remained the same

Choos­ing one task above the others

This third result was par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing, I think. The way par­tic­i­pants made one of the tasks more impor­tant than the oth­ers was that the researchers had them name three gains from com­plet­ing that par­tic­u­lar task dur­ing the day, as well as three pos­si­ble hin­drances to com­plet­ing it. By dis­tin­guish­ing one of the day’s tasks as the most impor­tant, par­tic­i­pants were able to focus more and were less divid­ed between all of the tasks they had to do that day. 

Do this

If you want to mul­ti­task less in your work, take note of what came out of the afore­men­tioned study.

From your list of every­thing you want to get done today, choose which task is most impor­tant to do today. Just one, when all you have to do is impor­tant? Yes, because once you have com­plet­ed it, you can choose anoth­er one, as long as there is time left in the workday.

You can write the task on a Pos­tIt and paste it in where it is lit­er­al­ly ​“in your face” so that there is no doubt about what you most want to get done. You can put a ​“high pri­or­i­ty” label on the task in your dig­i­tal to-do list or a star if you use Microsoft To-Do. You can high­light the task with a high­lighter in your favorite col­or if you have your to-do list on paper. Or, do some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent that suits you bet­ter to high­light one of your tasks from the rest.

To make the con­trast between your cho­sen task and the oth­ers even greater, think of three gains from com­plet­ing it today and three pos­si­ble things that might pre­vent you from doing so.

Through­out the day, note if this high­light­ing of one of the tasks helps you mul­ti­task less. If you get a taste for it — make this method a habit, to use every day or on days when you are extra busy.

High­er qual­i­ty and more focus

If you select one task from all the day’s tasks and make it your most pri­or­i­tized task of the day, you will be able to focus on it more eas­i­ly instead of jump­ing between many tasks, judg­ing by what Szu­mows­ka and Kruglan­ski’s study sug­gests. You will be less frag­ment­ed, able to deliv­er with high­er qual­i­ty, and I sus­pect you will also feel greater sat­is­fac­tion with what you have accom­plished at the end of the day.

How do you do it?

Do you do some­thing sim­i­lar to what I have described here? Per­haps you are one of those peo­ple who, in the late after­noon, choose the three most impor­tant tasks for tomor­row. Write and share your thoughts!

(Did you also know that you can get help focus­ing with Win­dows Clock?)