TIME TO TRY SOLO taskıng
For years we’ve been told that multi-tasking is the way forward. But what if it’s not?
WORDS ERIN KELLY
ONE DIRECTION
Last night I cooked dinner while helping my child learn the three times table, then loaded the dishwasher with the phone wedged under my chin, on hold to a company. Then I ‘relaxed’ by watching TV while ironing, with one eye on my Twitter feed. I went to bed wired and couldn’t sleep till 1am. Sound familiar? This is classic multi-tasking. If you’re doing a million things at once, you might have noticed that your concentration is shot, you’re snappy and tired and, despite all the juggling, nothing ever actually gets done properly.
Multi-tasking is nothing new, but the rise of smartphones and tablets mean that we rarely do just one thing; many of us check our mobiles up to 110 times a day. The irony is, it’s not even efficient. ‘We think of the brain as having limitless capacity, but actually it can be used up, just like the storage on a computer,’ explains psychologist and life coach Jonathan Lipitch.