The Challenges of Multitasking

What are the challenges of multitasking on your everyday life and how to overcome them?

“You can do two things at once, but you can't focus effectively on two things at once”- Gary Keller

Multitasking may come across as a term commonly used to save time and get things done as quickly as possible. Multitasking skill is considered to be a must have skill for most executives. But, it's all about controlling and shuffling with your mind but in less efficient ways. In today's era, people are constantly on their smartphone chatting away while dangerously driving or during business meetings and so on. It has become a part of our daily lives. Imagine switching back and forth between a couple of tasks that you out to complete in a given time frame, it eventually slows down your mind. Focusing on a single task increases your thinking capability as well as productivity. These are some of the challenges multi-tasking may cause:

• Although our brains are designed to multi-task, it makes it harder on the frontal lobe of our brain. This is the part of our brain that controls emotions, stress, skills, expressions and so on. This eventually leads to an increase in chronic stress levels and weaken attentiveness as well as alertness.

• Your mental productivity tends to reduce when you start focusing on multiple tasks to be completed in the given time frame. It also ultimately leads to efficiency reduction too.

• Some of the phycological studies in the past have proven that your mind tends to slow down in the process of switching between multiple tasks, gradually leading to mental friction.

• There have been several pieces of research conducted on how multitasking impacts your brain. There are numerous problems that may arise over the due course of time, some of the most conspicuous one being the weakness in working memory as well as long-term memory.

• Depression and social anxiety have been a growing issue over the last few years amongst the adults and youngsters. One of the common factors that were identified with the people diagnosed with depression was multi-tasking and use of media. This has indirectly had affected their mental wellbeing and emotional health. 

• We have already established how multi-tasking causes distractibility that are often associated with relationship problems.

We have established the challenges of multi-tasking, but there are several ways to overcome these too. These are some tips to help you:

• Get organized, get your mornings started with a checklist of things you need to complete for the day
• Declutter all the apps on your smartphone that you consider is wasting your time and has been causing you an addict. While staying abreast with the latest tech trends can improve your productivity. 
• Stop switching between one task to the other.
• Finally, know your productive hours. Not everyone needs to be a morning person, there are night owls too. Utilize your time effectively and efficiently.

Multi-tasking does have consequences and you'll need to start considering the impact it has on your day to day life.