Multitasking is something that each freelancer knows all about.
In spite of everything, while you’re a solo entrepreneur, the buck stops with you.
You’re answerable for all the things from marketing to liaising with clients, completing projects to spec, and ensuring that you just receives a commission on time.
Because the expression goes, you wear numerous hats – and infrequently, you have got to wear multiple hat at the identical time.
Being adept at multitasking is a skill, but that doesn’t mean that it’s a very good one. What if we told you that mastering the art of monotasking was essential, too?
What’s Monotasking and How Does It Differ from Multitasking?
Monotasking, also often known as single tasking, is the act of coping with a single task at a time. This can be a type of time management that requires you to tackle and complete one task at a time.
Multitasking, alternatively, requires you to take care of multiple tasks at the identical time.
Monotasking differs from multitasking in a lot of key ways.
First, it gives you the possibility to enhance your level of deal with a selected objective that you should deal with. Multitasking could make it tougher to deal with a single task, as you will probably be working to perform many various objectives at the identical time.
The scope of your work also changes when using monotasking versus multitasking approaches.
Monotasking normally entails a smaller scope of labor, as you’ll be focused on a single task as a substitute of many. With that said, the scope of a single project could also be wider as a result of the topics or content inside it.
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Coping with one task at a time may cause changes to your levels of productivity.
For instance, you might complete more work overall and make more progress across many tasks while multitasking. Or, you might make significant strides on a single task and display the next level of productivity in consequence.
Why Multitasking is Counterproductive
In accordance with Entrepreneur, there are a couple of key reasons multitasking may very well impair your productivity reasonably than enhance it.
The expert publication notes that specializing in many tasks at the identical time can put pressure in your brain. This increases your stress levels and makes it tougher to change between tasks successfully.
Multitasking can impair your memory, as your brain just isn’t designed to handle quite a few tasks directly. While you continuously switch between activities, you might not pay close attention to any of them. Which means that you might find yourself being vulnerable to forgetting vital details and responsibilities.
Entrepreneur asserts that multitasking can hinder your creativity.
While you switch from one task to a different, you might struggle to deal with a selected problem and use your creative problem-solving skills to handle it. It is because your brain becomes used to shifting tasks. Eventually, it isn’t any longer capable of deal with one topic with its full power.
Research shows that task-switching can decrease your productivity by as much as 40%, even during on a regular basis activities like checking your emails or chatting with a team member.
Who Can Profit from Monotasking?
Monotasking is commonly essentially the most efficient method to take care of tasks and projects, especially under certain circumstances. If you have got advance notice for a workload that you should complete, you possibly can plan to monotask in an effort to finish it as soon as possible.
Moreover, monotasking is useful for many who tackle urgent deadlines, and those that have vital and complicated tasks to finish.
This manner of time management ensures which you can dedicate your full concentration to the duty at hand to fulfill deadlines and produce work according to what is predicted of you.
Learn how to Train Your Brain to Monotask
Research from Gloria Mark and her team on the University of California has found that it takes most individuals a median of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back to a task after they’re interrupted or modified their focus.
One other study from Stanford University found that folks who multitask perform worse at attention and memory tasks, and task completion, in comparison with their monotasking peers.
The explanation multitasking can harm your performance lies within the a part of your brain called the prefrontal cortex. This brain region performs many various tasks, but one in every of its key responsibilities is directing and maintaining your attention. It has two sides, which communicate with one another and the remaining of your brain.
While you monotask, either side of the prefrontal cortex work together to direct your attention. While you multitask, nonetheless, these sides must work independently of one another. Which means that not one of the tasks you might be performing gets your full attention. Multitasking also trains your brain to administer tasks in this manner.
The perfect method to train your brain to monotask is to practice mindfulness.
Focusing, as an illustration, in your respiration patterns for ten minutes, encourages either side of your prefrontal cortex to work together for that time period.
In case you do that every day, the perimeters of your prefrontal cortex will eventually learn to work harmoniously together, enabling you to remain on course with a single task. This has been proven by research, with one study noting that folks who took an eight-week Mindfulness Stress Reduction course saw an improvement of their ability to concentrate.
Mindfulness and meditation can train the brain to monotask, even when it’s not used to specializing in a single task at a time. It also helps in addressing breaks in focus related to past multitasking.
Learn how to Practice Monotasking
In accordance with Forbes, teaching your brain the way to monotask can reduce this time wastage and enable you to learn, read, listen, and problem solve using your full, undivided attention.
Step one is to try monotasking, and when distractions inevitably arise, acknowledge them after which consciously return back to your single-focus task. Steering your attention back to your task without judging yourself for becoming distracted will start to coach your brain to monotask, no matter what number of distractions are present.
You possibly can make a listing of your leading distractions, like phone notifications or interactions along with your clients, to construct your awareness so which you can steer yourself away from distractions after they appear.
Next, structure every workday in a way that means that you can focus deeply on crucial tasks.
You might, as an illustration, schedule tasks that require deep, singular focus for times of day at which you might be most alert. Fill in these time slots in your calendar, and set your devices to ‘Do Not Disturb’ mode before you start.
Discover a quiet area to work. Ask your team members to not disturb you unless it’s an emergency, and also you’ll be prepared to monotask successfully.
As distractions will at all times arise during your deep focus sessions, it’s vital to schedule a time at the tip of every day for coping with distractions like messages, notifications, emails and other requests.
It’s also possible to delegate or automate any distractions that come up repeatedly at work to make sure which you can focus completely without missing any vital responsibilities that don’t pertain to the monotask you’re working on.
5 Suggestions for Specializing in a Single Task
Listed below are some top tips about the way to deal with a single task successfully.
1. Set Priorities Consistently
Most professionals have extensive to-do lists. But when all the things in your list is urgent and vital, you might struggle to deal with a single task.
Take a couple of minutes every day to make a listing of your most vital priorities, which ought to be the tasks which have the biggest impact in your goals.
Limit your list of priorities to around five to seven tasks every day and address them consistently, without allowing yourself to develop into distracted with less vital items in your list.
2. Minimize Distractions
Specializing in one task means clearing away all other distractions, including smartphones, tablets, open browser tabs, clutter in your desk, and the rest that hinders your focus.
Doing it will sharpen your ability to concentrate to 1 thing at a time, and it’ll make it easier to recognize when things are distracting you.
Chances are you’ll find that you should rearrange your office in order that the noise of your printer or your phone ringing doesn’t distract you. Or ask those around you to maintain disruptions to a minimum if you are concentrating.
3. Set Aside Time During Which to Focus
Setting goals on how much time you’ll spend specializing in a monotask, at the very least if you are beginning to learn the way to monotask, could be helpful.
Using management tools and techniques like Pomodoro that separate tasks into approachable portions punctuated by short breaks may help too.
4. Monotask During Your Sharpest Times of the Day
All and sundry has a selected period through the day after they perform at their best, feel their sharpest, and take care of the fewest distractions. This era is when monotasking will prove to be the best for you, especially if you have got just begun to learn the way to do it.
Whether you perform at your peak very first thing within the morning, at midday, or late within the evening, discover your best times of the day. Then, set them aside for monotasking for one of the best results.
5. Take Regular Breaks
It’s no coincidence that essentially the most effective time management techniques include many short breaks.
Taking breaks helps you to take care of focus in the long term. In case you are overwhelmed or overtired, you might struggle to concentrate, even to a single task.
Schedule frequent breaks throughout your workday, and take these breaks as a possibility to refocus, recharge, eat a nutritious meal or snack, and get some fresh air if possible.
Making the Time to Monotask and Manage Your Productivity
Those that multitask may find themselves with little time to administer their time and productivity.
Changing over to a monotasking work method will unencumber your time. However it’s vital to make time to plan your monotasking to show it right into a sustainable habit.
Most experts recommend taking ten to fifteen minutes in the beginning of every day to make a to-do list so as of priority, and to apportion a certain quantity of time for every task.
Planning your day prematurely will help you get a very powerful tasks out of the way in which first. This will make you more productive and potentially reduce your stress levels and curb any stress-related anxiety.
You possibly can put aside one other short time period halfway through your day to evaluate your progress and make changes to your list of priorities and time allotments. This may increasingly be crucial in case you use more time than expected to finish a certain task, and can make it easier to keep your priorities on course without missing any crucial deadlines.
Measuring Your Output When Monotasking
Using a scorecard is among the finest ways to sharpen your focus and assess your output when monotasking.
Your scorecard should capture three key categories of data: what’s being measured, or the metric; what your goal is, or the goal; and your current performance, or the baseline.
Distinguishing between activities, outcomes, inputs and outputs will make it easier to measure the output and value you might be creating, value more highly sales figures, more successful digital marketing campaigns, or more commanding written copy for clients.
Taking note of your outputs aligns you along with your goals and focuses your attention to enhance your performance and your accountability.
Can You Mix Multitasking and Monotasking?
Multitasking and monotasking could be combined under certain circumstances, especially in case you are working through a busy schedule.
As an illustration, practicing mindfulness while responding to messages and emails and walking or exercising during phone meetings are types of multitasking that may actually help to enhance your productivity.
You possibly can perform these multitasking habits through the periods of time allotted for them while practicing monotasking for priority tasks that need your full attention.
Multitasking may also make it easier to profit from the time that you have got put aside for coping with distractions, like speaking with clients or answering emails.
You might speak to your clients or co-collaborators while taking a walk or cycling on a stationary bicycle. This could make it easier to communicate with them and recenter yourself before your next monotask.
Use Monotasking To Your Advantage
Monotasking may help to spice up your productivity as a freelancer by training your brain to deal with specific tasks without interruption.
The perfect method to train yourself to monotask effectively is to practice mindfulness, discover your primary every day distractions, and minimize these distractions nonetheless you possibly can.
Take a while to list your tasks every single day by order of priority and monotask through the periods of time at which you might be at your sharpest and most motivated.
By doing this, you’ll help to sharpen your monotasking skills. Plus, you’ll train yourself to perform deep work and reach vital deadlines consistently without becoming overwhelmed or burned out.
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