The Sharp Solution by Hanna Heidi

Author:Hanna, Heidi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2010-01-20T16:00:00+00:00

Always remember that attention is something you have to pay for with your energy. You can maximize your energy account if you're mindful of how you're spending, conserve when necessary, and invest in your energy supply throughout the day. This way, you'll have what you need—not only to meet your daily demands, but also to give energy to the people and activities that matter most to you.

Multitasking and Our Monkey Brain

With so many demands on your mental energy, it's easy to find yourself being pulled in multiple directions. Jumping from one project to another may seem like the only option for getting things done; however, the negative impact on attention and focus is significant and stressful to the brain. Although we claim that being “good at multitasking” is part of our job description, we need to change the way we tackle multiple priorities so that we can focus our mental energy on those things that really require our attention.

While this approach may appear to take longer, the fact is that we can actually get more done in the time we have. This ends up saving us precious time in the long run, increases our productivity and performance, and keeps our brain in a more relaxed and focused state.

The truth is that our brain is wired in a way that only allows it to focus on one thing at a time. Consider the simple example of juggling. It may appear that you're doing several tasks at once, but you can only focus on one ball at a time—the rest are just floating in the air. The time it takes to switch our attention back and forth between tasks substantially reduces our efficiency. In addition to slowing us down, it puts unnecessary stress on our system, leading us to make more errors in our performance while our bodies produce higher levels of unhealthy cortisol.

In a recent study, participants who completed two simultaneous tasks took up to 30 percent longer and made twice as many errors as those who completed the same tasks in sequence.1 When we switch tasks, we have to turn our attention away from one task and then determine or recall the rules for completing the next task. Time-management experts believe that it can take approximately 20 minutes to fully recover from shifting attention, and the time increases for more complex tasks. Think about how challenging it can be to get back into the creative flow after you've been distracted by a co-worker, a phone call, or watching your email inbox accumulate messages. Anyone who's ever become distracted while reading understands what happens when you lose your attention for even a moment: Your mind wanders and you have to flip back a few pages to figure out where you left off.

Another problem with multitasking is that it forces us to respond quickly, without time to assess the situation, consider multiple options, and then mindfully make a decision. As we discussed earlier, this situation forces us to use our monkey brain. Multitaskers also show higher levels of stress hormones than their more single-minded counterparts.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.