Multi-tasking or Mindfulness?

I had a conversation with my Manager recently about the challenges of multi-tasking. The conversation took me back to a workshop that I attended, many years ago, on mindfulness and how effective this can be in improving our performance, both at work and in our personal lives.  

 

Is mindfulness more important during this current pandemic, given that many people are working remotely, many are not working, and many are experiencing increased levels of stress?  There is a great deal of research available that shows that focusing your mind on the task in hand, and just the one task, is far more effective than trying to multi-task.  For example, a research study by Stanford University showed that multi-taskers were found to consistently underperform single-taskers; they are too easily distracted and have difficulty in filtering out what’s not relevant.  So, it’s interesting that so many job specifications include multi-tasking as a required personal characteristic.  In another study, at Harvard, psychologists Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert found that people spend almost 47% of their waking hours thinking about something other than what they’re currently doing.  

 

In other research, by a professor from Georgetown University, focus without distraction was called ‘deep work’; maybe this is a more acceptable term in relation to the work environment?  The professor was Cal Newport, a best selling author on deep work.  Newport believes that the ability to focus without distraction can lead to extraordinary results; that it will make you better at what you do and will provide a true sense of fulfilment.  He called it a super power!

 

Perhaps employers need to be brave and add ability to practice mindfulness, or ‘deep work’, or single-tasking, to their list of required personal skills and competencies?  

 

In many circumstances we are told /advised that we must multi-task.  Yes, we do have to balance competing demands for our time and energy, and we have to handle multiple priorities, but maybe because we know this we forget to focus on being a strong single-tasker too.  Is being good at single-tasking part of being good at multi-tasking?

 

Of course, mindfulness goes further than single-tasking, and can be used effectively whether you’re remote working, not working or working as we did before the Covid 19 pandemic; and there are many resources available to help anyone wanting to practice mindfulness. I do remember feeling rather cynical of the whole concept prior to the workshop, but I learned a lot and have even managed to put some of it into practice sometimes!  I just think that it’s really important to recalibrate from time to time during the day; it really helps with feeling calmer, kinder, and if the ability to focus makes us more productive, surely that has to be a good thing.

 

I guess there is a time and a place for both.  However, it seems to me that there isn’t enough acceptance or recognition of the positive benefits of being a really good single-tasker.