Opinion: Why it's not worth encouraging your staff to multi-task

We're realising people aren't machines and they get burned out - and burning out is costly for both the individual and the organisation, says Northland business coach Karen Ross. Getty Images

Multi-tasking has been in favour for some time, perhaps since the 90s when people decided that efficiency was king, and surely we should be able to get more done.

Fast forward to today and brain science tells a very different story – not only about how much we can get done, but how well we'll do it. After all, you may get that proposal or finished product out to your customer on time, or even early, but is it as good as you'd like?

Did you nail it?

This focus on working bigger, better, faster has taken a turn in recent years so that instead of asking "How much can I get done – and how quickly?" we are thinking about "How can I get this done in the smartest - and most sustainable - way?"

We're realising that people simply aren't machines and they can and do get burned out - and burning out is rather costly for both the individual and the organisation.

Research is going on around the world looking at how our neurology is affected by multitasking. Across the board, it's clear that we're just not built for it. Instead, we are at our best when we let ourselves focus on one thing at a time.

There's one particularly simple explanation for this – we have limited capacity for processing information at a conscious level, or in what scientists call our working memory.

We can process about 7+/- 2 bits per second (computer speed) which means we can only hold a handful of information in our mind at once before things start to "drop off".

Think of that shopping trip where you had your list of groceries in mind (just eggs, broccoli, milk, the bread Ian likes and some loo paper). But, when your hubby sent a text asking for feta cheese and a cauli, the eggs fell off your mental shopping list and … now you're half way home without the eggs.

You can blame your frontal cortex for this – it just can't always hold it all at once.

World renowned neuroscientist, Earl Miller at MIT, explains that our brains are "not wired to multitask well... when people think they're multitasking, they're actually just switching from one task to another very rapidly. And every time they do, there's a cognitive cost."

The cost is that it taxes our working memory and causes mental fatigue, stress (it's shown to increase cortisol levels), difficulty decision making, and often lowers our efficiency and work quality.

Technology, social media and the pace of change expose us to so much information, throwing so many things at us in quick succession that even if we want to focus on one task at a time, we can find it difficult.

This probably explains the mindfulness revolution that has swept the globe in recent years. Mindfulness featured on the cover of Time magazine in 2014 and since then has flowed through office corridors from Google to government departments, to schools and beyond.

At the heart of mindfulness is the value of being in the moment – with our attention on one thing at a time. Being able to do that at work can start to make a real difference to how we're performing, feeling and being.

Tips
• Next time you're stopped at the lights, sitting in the dentist's waiting room or even standing at the checkout, rather than looking at your phone or a magazine, do one thing for a few moments - simply breathe.

• If you need to focus on writing a report that will take an hour (and you are not an emergency room doctor - seriously, folks) put your phone on silent, turn it upside down and let yourself dive in to your task, uninterrupted.

• Complete tasks in batches of the same kind since they require the same thinking mode – clear your emails, sort some admin, prepare all of your invoices in one go.

• Rather than expecting staff members to do multiple things at once, encourage "one thing at a time".

■ Karen Ross is a Northland business coach, trainer and speaker.