Tip #5: Do Not Multitask
When it comes to your sui generis work, you should monotask, i.e., work on one thing at a time
Job seekers used to brag on their resumes about their ability to multitask. They had better not do that anymore. The latest scientific work suggests that multitasking is a myth. When you think you are multitasking, what you are actually doing is simply attempting to work while being distracted with worse results. You never really do multiple things at the same time. Instead, you work on one thing and then another and back to the first one and, studies show, the quality of your work on each goes down.
This is part of a series. See main series page “My Best Productivity Recommendations, Boiled Down and Annotated.”
When it comes to your sui generis work you should monotask, which means work on only one thing at a time. Concentrate on just one thing. Do it for a limited amount of time since real concentrated attention and focus cannot be sustained over longer periods anyway. So, rather than multitasking you should monotask—perhaps with a timer set for 10 minutes at first. You can extend your time to 25 or 45 minutes as your attention muscle gets stronger, but 45 is probably tops. Then you need to take a break.
And you need to make it a real break. Do not work all the time. Taking real breaks will make work time, work time. It will make you more productive in less time if you take proper breaks and properly differentiate work time from non-work time.
A study run by The New York Times that showed that workers expecting an interruption that never came were many times more productive than workers in a control group who were not expecting to be interrupted and indeed were not interrupted. The expectation of an interruption in the lab setting could be mimicked in your work situation by setting a timer. Counting on the interruption by the timer will make the short time to work more precious and your concentration muscle will really dig in.