When you are in the beginning stages of building your business, there is a very good chance you are doing most, if not all, of the tasks yourself. You are in charge of product or service creation, sales, bookkeeping, shipping, and more. And don’t forget laundry, taking care of your kids and making dinner. The natural inclination is to multitask, but you may just be making things worse.
Research shows that our brains can only focus on one thing at a time. You can probably handle a couple of basic things at one time, like grating cheese and talking to your mom on the phone, but not several things that require concentration.
Experiments that measured brain activity during multitasking have shown several different negative effects. First, regions of the brain that specialize in visual processing and physical coordination are activated, leaving less energy for the areas that are used for learning and remembering. Basically, you are just processing the information. There is little comprehension and you are probably not committing anything to memory. Second (and I think much worse), increased levels of stress related hormones are present during multitasking. Stress realated hormones are very hard on the body, so multitasking is unhealthy.
You will have much more success, and a greater sense of control, if you build a clear and manageable to-do list. Then work your way through it, one task at a time. You’ll actually get more done, and more out of what you do finish. If you need a little help, here’s a link to my previous post about time management.
