An underlying reason of why you, me (and literally million more people) multitask excessively!

Do you find yourself checking your mobile while you are at the dinner table? Or switching to a different tab and opening your email while you are working on an important presentation?

That’s multitasking and if we go on to count the number of times we do this kind of task-switching, it would probably be in the hundreds or thousands.

One of the reasons we multitask excessively is to avoid getting bored. When you switch to a new task, it releases dopamine in your brain and you feel good. This creates a dopamine-addiction feedback loop and guess what this encourages? MORE MULTITASKING!

In a way, you are rewarding your brain for switching and losing focus and conditioning it to perform this behavior more and more.

This can lead to a dangerous path.

Now that we know how bad multitasking is, how can we change our behavior?

One way is to be okay with being bored. Say, you are bored working on your project. Instead of opening your phone, tell yourself, “I can resist using my phone for just 10 minutes. Once I finish this, I’ll have time to scroll through Instagram.”

Doing this, you can gradually increase your ability to have longer focus periods. That 10 minutes can turn into 20 and then 45. And that urge to check your phone, email, Instagram DM, would slowly get less and less.

Another way that I'm myself tacking this issue is by putting up sprint timer inside Brutask. That way, once the clock has started, I have single-focus on the task at hand and I find myself to be much more effective throughout the day.

How do you avoid multitasking?
Let's discuss new ideas in the comments!

Love,
Siddhita ❤️