Jim Kwik explains why multitasking doesn't work: your brain can't do two cognitive tasks at once, only switch between them. Refocusing after a switch takes 5-10 minutes. Surgeons who multitask make more errors, and task switching burns glucose, leaving you mentally exhausted.
How many of you multitask to keep up? Raise your hand. A lot of multitasking. Now the research is showing that multitasking is actually a myth. You can't do 2 parallel cognitive activities at once. What you're doing is task switching. The thing you think you're gaining, which is time, you're actually losing because it could take anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes to regain your focus when you go from something to another thing. Did you know surgeons make more errors during operations if they try to multitask? If that wasn't reason enough to focus on one thing at a time, losing time, making more errors, it actually burns a lot of brain glucose. When you are working on a specific thing, When you're doing a specific cognitive task, a certain part of your brain is lit up, and then in order to switch that over, you have to shut this down and open something else up. It requires a lot of sugar, a lot of energy. And so how many of you sometimes feel just mentally drained? You have this mental fatigue, maybe feel a little bit of burnout, maybe because you're trying to do too many things at the same time, and you'd be much more effective focusing on one thing.
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