Monotasking

Hey friends!

Recently, I have been thinking about how to best balance the time I spend on my different areas of interest. One of the approaches I came across is monotasking, which I think may help me.

What's Monotasking and how is it different to Multitasking?

Monotasking, also known as single tasking, is a time management strategy based on a simple principle of focusing on one thing at time. It is more efficient than constantly multitasking throughout your day.

For a long time now, multitasking has been perceived as a positive thing, a sure sign of being productive and able to manage 2, 3 or even 4 tasks at once. When you multitask, you don't actually focus on multiple things at once like you may imagine. In reality, you constantly switch from one task to another, often without even noticing. Each time you switch task, you confuse your brain and lose focus, often resulting in a severe productivity loss. In the long term, multitasking can even lead to a reduction in grey matter in the brain, which is responsible for a number of things including empathy and emotions, decision making and self control.

How can Monotasking increase my productivity and efficiency?

Monotasking allows you to fully immerse yourself in your chosen activity, without constant interruption from other tasks as you switch back and forth. Think of it like this: your time, effort and mental capacity is a jug. Each of your goals/hobbies/projects is a cup. You can either work on filling all the cups at once (multitasking) which will fill them all, albeit very slowly; or fill one at a time, pouring all your resources into filling that one cup, therefore filling it up faster, before starting on the next.

As I am prone to multitasking, I have identified what should help me get better at monotasking:

• Maintaining a task list which identifies my priorities
• Removing distractions - if I can identify why certain things distract me, I can try and cut them off at the source
• The Pomodoro Technique - setting a timer for 25 minutes to work on one thing specifically. Once the timer goes off, I take a 5 minute break and repeat.

This time management strategy seems quite promising for me, and I'm going to try focusing on it more in my daily schedule. If you are also in the habit of multitasking, you might be interested in this article on the topic.

Thanks for reading!

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Cheers, Toby