5 Reasons Why You Need to Stop Multitasking

by Jon Allo

If multitasking is one of your business habits, you aren’t doing yourself any favors. The idea that multitasking helps to get more done is a myth, particularly in business.

Multitasking affects our ability to focus – we’re simply more effective when doing one thing at a time.

Here are 5 good reasons you need to stop multitasking.

1. Your Brain Isn’t a Fan

Some people take pride in being able to juggle many tasks at once. But when you do this, your mind isn’t focused on any one task. For instance, we often meet a new person and instantly forget their name because we’re distracted and we’re unable to process or keep the new information.

Lack of focus and concentration can affect your professional life. By doing many things at once, you never focus on anything properly. And this affects your productivity and the success of your business.

2. More Tasks = More Mistakes

This is the consequence of the lack of focus. When you do many things together, your mind gets torn between them. This means your mistakes increase and you don’t do your best. Multitaskers are bad at filtering out irrelevant information. This means there’s a likelihood of mental cross-firing and overlap between tasks.

You can’t afford to make these mistakes. Instead, give each task your full attention, individually.

3. Multitasking Is a Waste of Time

When you try to complete small tasks while working on large ones, you end up wasting time instead of saving it. This is because your mind has to reset to each task following the shift.

Multitasking hinders you from maintaining flow states. For example, when you read a captivating book you feel like time stands still. You look at the pages you’ve read hours later and you’re surprised at how much you’ve read. Also, in business, getting in flow can boost your productivity by five times.

4. Multitasking Inhibits Creativity and Productivity

By devoting your attention to several tasks at once, you lack working memory to come up with new ideas and concepts that are creative. You’ll get your work done in average time and scope, but it will lack greatness.

5. Multitasking Causes Burnout

Doing several things at once causes the brain to switch attention from one task to another. The rapid and continual switching involved in multitasking makes the brain burn fuel rapidly and so we feel exhausted and disoriented – even after a short time. This is because we’re rapidly depleting nutrients in our brain.

Considering the reasons above, it’s easy to see why the value of multitasking is a myth. And it helps no one to achieve anything important efficiently. Stop trying to do everything at once! Streamline your process and make the most out of your designated work time, to boost your productivity and grow your business.

Every successful entrepreneur has made mistakes in their business at some time or another. It’s all part of the learning process. Although mistakes are going to happen, you can avoid a number of common business mistakes.