Unitasking: How to Get More Done in Less Time

Have you ever found yourself falling into this overwhelmingly effort-consuming task series? Once perceived as an elusive virtue, multitasking, the act of dealing with more than one task at the same time, has now been shown to adversely impact brain regions responsible for higher cognitive abilities and informational processing, as discussed below. It often slows us down and increases the number of errors we make, all while simultaneously giving us a false sense of productivity. [1],[2]

The dopamine highs from rapidly switching from one task to another establish neural feedback loops that are hard to overwrite. Experience tells us that traditional solutions like checking emails only 3 times a day or turning off mobile phone notifications are nearly impossible to adapt to for the long term. Instead, ‘unitasking’ — focusing on one task at a time by using techniques like clumping similar tasks together, blocking out distractions, and designating relaxation time — may prove to be the healthier way out of this inevitable trap.