Multitasking and stress resistance are buzzwords in any company. Who does not cope with multitasking is ineffective. Who is not stress-resistant, won’t work for long. Previously we believed in it. Today we’ll tell about how multitasking interferes with life.
Contents
Multitasking is not what you think
Psychologists in the United States conducted a study to find out whether we are really so multitasking as we think. They proved the contrary: those who consider themselves particularly multitask actually can’t cope with multitasking. They are not able to concentrate, quickly lose interest and constantly look for new stimuli. It’s not multitasking, it’s laxity.
Conversely, people who really cope with multiple tasks at the same time, demonstrate the ability of concentration, self-discipline and overall mental severity.
Unproductive multitasking
It happens that you open a notebook and disappear, so to say. You are doing something like reading articles, flipping through social networks, respond to letters, making phone calls. Hours are passing and then you finally realize that it is already lunchtime, but nothing has been done so far. It’s unproductive multitasking.
You can pay it in favor
Write down everything you find interesting during these “disappearings”: interesting article, quote, link, video, etc. Gradually you will accumulate a large file of thoughts to which you can return.
Allocate a fixed amount of time on this process in certain days. At this time don’t do anything else. Only non-urgent letters, social networks, articles, analysis, business magazines, phone calls. Allocating this time, you tell yourself that you won’t have another time for that. So you purposefully and passionately immerse yourself in the Internet and small business. You can use helpful time-management software to track your daily working processes and organize your timework.
Multitasking is a path to depression
We’re not talking about multitasking just for fun. We have a lot of work. Basically, too much. When all our life becomes a job, we are moving up the career ladder, but at the same time grow stupid and depressed.
Ethologist Sergio Pellis wrote “The Playful Brain”, in which he described the following feature of our brain: when a person is deprived of the opportunity to switch from work and focus on leisure, it is harder to endure stressful situations and cope with challenges. This is evidenced by the experimental data, statistics and a lot more. The main conclusion:
Who works all the time, falls apart and grow stupid
Here work is contrasted not to the rest as it is, but namely to the purposeful creative leisure. It makes our mind more flexible and resistant to the difficulties and stress.
There are creative games. You can solve the puzzle or design an intergalactic cruiser in the garage. You can write an adventure novel or ride around the city with a camera. Anything can serve as creative leisure as long as you choose it yourself and spend several hours without being distracted by work. Then you’ll get intellectual growth, emotional stability and willingness to make the right decisions in stressful situations.
If you alternate work with housework or lying on the sofa, you’ll get nothing. Through time, this continuous labor multitasking will affect your brain.
Conclusion
- A truly multitask person is not the one who makes all the tasks at once, but the one who is able to focus quickly and switch to another task just as quickly.
- “Disappearance” in the Internet is useful only if you collect all useful information you find and return to it.
- Stress resistance and long-term success in life and career is the result of purposeful creative leisure, and not of spending all your life in the office.