Are you juggling a million things at once? Watch this to learn the best way to multitasking effectively in your business!

Transcript:

Hi and welcome to another episode of BaranovTV designed to demystify the world of accounts and tax, and to help your business grow.

Now I’ve got some questions for you today for the start of the episode.

• Have you ever looked at your emails while you’re on a phone call?
• Have you ever been trying to have a conversation with somebody and say, “Oh well I’ll just send that email now while we’re speaking,” and you were actually doing something else before you started the conversation, so you’re hopping from one thing to the next?

We all do it!

We’re all constantly trying to multitask because we’re caught trying to get through everything that we want to do. But actually looking at some research this week, we can lose 40% of our productivity just by trying to do too much at the same time.

And actually, there’s a 10% decrease in our IQ by trying to do that because we’re just spreading ourselves too thin. The 10% loss of IQ, or reduction in IQ, is actually the same effect as not sleeping for an entire night.

So it has a real impact on our ability to get things sorted.

Looking at the research, they’re actually suggesting that rather than trying to do more than one thing at a time and multitasking, we should actually do what they’re calling ‘unitasking’, which is doing one thing at a time, but doing one thing in a really focused way.

So if we’re trying to concentrate on a piece of work sitting at the desk, we should have emails turned off or at least closed. We should have the phone off or diverted, and to try and batch our calls, so that if we’re making one call we’re going to make a whole lot of them all at once, so that we can concentrate on those calls.

This, evidently, makes sure that our full brain capacity is focused on one thing.

It also means that we’re supposed to manage distractions as closely as possible, so that we don’t experience them, so that we actually can focus on one thing without all of those other things occurring whilst we’re trying to focus.

So multitasking is out, and unitasking, evidently, is the way to go!

I’ve been trying to do it for the last couple of days, and it does actually make a difference. It does take some practice because we’re so used to think, a thought will come through your brain and you’ll think, “Ahh before I lose that, I’ll make a note of it,” but it really is a case of, now try and focus. I’ve found that I’ve actually got through more stuff, so my message this week, really for this episode, is try unitasking. Try and set yourselves time when you can perhaps try unitasking and see what you think.

I’d be really interested to see whether it does make a difference, and to hear what tips you come up with. So if you do give it a go, do let me know how you get on. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with that thought, and I’ll see you all very soon.