Can multitasking really help saving time?

Multitasking is highly valued in today's society and is often seen as efficient and productive. Many believe that it allows them to complete more tasks in less time. And who doesn't know it: the weekly team meeting takes place, somebody talks and in the meantime the most important emails are dealt with or the agenda for the coming day is planned. And also for the employer, an employee seems to be particularly valuable when he or she can complete a large number of tasks in the shortest possible time. Efficiency is the keyword here. But do efficiency and the simultaneous completion of several tasks really go hand in hand?

When does simultaneity work?

Doing many tasks at once is usually one thing above all: overwhelming. But why does the myth of productive multitasking persist?

For one thing, the image of the hard-working, multitasking (mostly female) person has been shaped primarily by successful storytelling in film and media. And it continues to be perpetuated through reproduction.

On the other hand, there are also tasks that can certainly be done in parallel. Especially for small and easy assignments, simultaneous completion of tasks can be trained to a certain extent. Routine tasks in particular fall under this category. Driving a car and talking on the phone over the loudspeaker at the same time, for example, has long been part of the repertoire of many car drivers. Another example: many office workers listen to music or run a podcast while performing certain tasks. We have already written about the advantages and disadvantages of this in a previous article.

Sometimes people also unconsciously switch back and forth between tasks. This happens mainly when new stimuli affect us that lead to a change in the current objective or a shift in priorities.

When does simultaneity not work? The obstacles of multitasking

Multitasking can put obstacles in your way. One of the things to blame is the time it takes the brain to switch between tasks. The more frequently these switches occur within a shorter period of time, the higher the cognitive load on the brain.

The fact that tasks are genuinely completed in parallel is therefore nothing more than an illusion. This is easy to imagine if you envision the way a computer works. Even though it often seems as if a computer does everything at the same time (receiving mails, opening and saving files, maintaining internet connections), in fact all these things happen very quickly one after the other. And if you overload your computer with too many requests (aka stimuli) at the same time, the inevitable happens: it freezes.

And exactly the same thing can happen to you if you try to do too much at once. The human "freeze" manifests itself in different symptoms:

• Your receptiveness is impaired
  Our brain is designed to filter stimuli and keep them to a minimum to prevent information overload. However, if we deliberately put ourselves in situations where an increased number of stimuli have to be processed, our receptiveness is reduced as a result. Ultimately, in the worst case, the quality of the end product suffers from multitasking.

• You are more stressed
  Once you have completed a task, it does not feel like a success because there is so much more to do (in parallel). It is therefore difficult to really enjoy the completion of a task.

So multitasking is not the best way to deal with the demands of modern working life.

Productivity apart from multitasking

But the question now rightly arises: how do I work productively and efficiently? How do I keep track of the many tasks I have on my to-do list for the day?

We have already addressed the first help indirectly: write a to-do list! This will give you an overview of all the tasks that need to be done. In the next step, you can set priorities. There are different methods for doing this. For example, you can sort the to-dos into different categories:

• One most important task that should definitely be completed that day
• three important tasks that should also be completed
• and five tasks that are less urgent and that you can tackle if you still have time at the end of the day.

This is called the 1-3-5 method.

It also helps to delegate tasks. If you have the opportunity to hand things off to colleagues, don't hesitate to lighten up on your to-dos!

What we can conclude is this: Multitasking is not an effective way to work more productively. Instead, we should focus on one task and do it consistently.