Difficulty for Mono-tasking

Sharing my thoughts on mono-tasking versus multi-tasking

If I can guess correctly, most of us have difficulty doing one task until fully completed. It is the same for me also. In my work, I need to contact many of my clients daily.

Hardly would I be able to sit down and call at least ten persons without attempting to do another task. It may be checking some emails, looking at my WhatsApp, calling my friend for a chat, attending to some household chores etc.

You get the point. It may have something to do with my discipline, or I may be bored by one task.

Why should we not multi-task?

We have repeatedly been told that if we need to find success, we must do one task until its completion.

Strangely, when drafting this article for Medium, I seem to have more discipline to complete it. When we write, we need to think and do not want our creative thoughts to vanish. Hence we go on and on to write.

So back to my sharing about mono-tasking. I learnt from the internet that our brain is wired to handle multiple tasks simultaneously, and focusing on one task is challenging.

If that is true, we are all faced with a challenge. How will we tame our minds to do one task until completion?

Another reason cited was that we live in a world full of distractions. Hence we are constantly distracted.

One other reason could be due to pressure. We are pressured daily to complete our tasks quickly. Hence we try to multi-task to save some time.

There is research that advises us not to multi-task. A study by the University of California Irvine found that it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to refocus on a task after being interrupted.

Another study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology found that multi-tasked people had more difficulty filtering out irrelevant information than those focusing on one task at a time.

In conclusion

We should do our best to focus on only one task at a time. Recently, my boss reminded us to focus on one idea when contacting our clients. Do not switch from one idea to another for different calls. This method is the only way to track our success using that idea.

I hope you have picked up an idea from me. Focus on just one idea or task in whatever you do. Do not switch around so that you can track if your plan is working. Or at least finish your work.

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