Achieving Your Best Results by Single-tasking.

It has been proven that the easier route to go to increase your productivity is to single-task. It may seem impossible at first thought when one considers the number of things that need to be done. However, it is a surprisingly powerful way for you to give your best.

Studies have shown that while multitasking may make us feel stimulated, we suffer the adverse effects of actually being less productive. In fact, a fascinating study conducted at the University of Virginia found that while our brain receives 11 million “bits” of information each second, it can only process 40 of them — that’s less than one percent of the amount of information we receive.

Another surprising observation shows that our brain doesn’t actually multitask. Instead, it frantically switches between tasks, reducing overall productivity by 20% at each switch.

On the brighter side, single tasking has proven both effective in getting work done better, and more efficiently. Imagine the outcome of being able to concentrate and focus on a task at every given time. Doing just one thing at a time helps you remember more, get more done in less time, de-stress, bring more attention to your work, and work smarter, instead of just harder.

Our environment can make single tasking tricky because a lot of things may draw or need our attention at the same time,However, this is an important skill we must learn because:

• Single tasking lets us build our ‘attention muscle’ responsible for how long we can control our direct attention. An interesting observation is that the attention span of the average human is just 8 seconds. About 15 years ago, it was 12 seconds on average.

Moreover, learning a new skill helps keep our brains healthy and stimulated with a good dose of dopamine, a hormone that plays a role in how we feel pleasure.

My paramount point is this -we need to work smarter and not harder. We can only do so by increasing our productivity and we can only better our productivity by focusing on one task at a time, ensuring we execute each one efficiently.

How can we break the cycle of faux productivity? Read here.