Forget multitasking, think monotasking for greater productivity

Women have always been the ultimate multi-taskers in life and business, it’s part of our DNA. But here’s a thing - it appears that if we really want to get productive in our business time, we need to focus and become great mono-taskers, perfecting the art of doing one thing at a time really well and without distraction. Professor Gloria Mark, a resident professor at the University of California’s Department of Informatics, has some really interesting insights on this subject and the downsides of multitasking. She has calculated that it takes on average around 23 minutes to properly get back to a task once you have been interrupted, and let’s face it, when we multitask we are interrupting each of those tasks constantly. That’s potentially a lot of wasted time and energy in our busy days. Also, when multitasking there’s a tendency to feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of tasks we are trying to complete at any one time, reaching the end of the day with a ‘to do’ list that just seems to get longer. So why not try mono-tasking and see if you become more productive as a result. Block off time for a single task, avoid checking your emails and messages every other second, ask people not to disturb you, and focus - you might find you get the job done quicker in the long run and actually buy more precious time in the day!