Is Multitasking Making You Less Effective at Home?

Posted on Apr 28, 2016 Topic : Women's Christian Living

Have you seen the adorable movie Up? A little dog in that movie named Dug is hilarious. He’ll be meandering around aimlessly, and then suddenly his eyes widen and his head whips around to focus intently on his target, the SQUIRREL! While we normally think about yelling “squirrel!” when we are distracted from what we should be doing, we can think of the squirrel in reverse. Dug’s awareness of the squirrel and the intensity with which he focuses on it is a silly illustration of how we can shift our attention from other things on occasion to be fully intent and focused on our prize. For Dug, it was a squirrel. For us, it may be a decluttered and orderly home.

Multitasking is effective in some circumstances

If you do dishes and listen to a podcast, for instance, you can do both effectively because the dishes can be done on autopilot. You can take a shower and plan your day or dream up ideas for your next project. You can ride the train to work and write an email. But if you are trying to answer emails and drive the car at the same time, or declutter a closet and make dinner, you’ll succeed only at one, or more likely you’ll fail or be less efficient at both.

The secret to achieving your goals

If you want a more organized home, decide which activities need your intense focus so you can stick with those for a designated period of time without distracting yourself at the same time with another task that should have been offered similar focused time. You would be surprised how much you can accomplish if you set aside focused time on something. Of course, you can do multiple tasks efficiently throughout the day with a little multitasking, perhaps like cleaning the bathroom and doing laundry by setting a timer to remind yourself to go and remove and fold the clothes from the dryer. But when you try to multi-focus on tasks that needed your undivided attention, everything unravels.

Follow these simple guidelines to make you more effective at any task you want to accomplish:

Focus energy on one important thing at a time. Set a timer for when it’s time to move on.
Focus on your most important work first if possible, for a longer block of time, while your energy and focus will be at its peak.
Balance your energy with focused blocks of time for daily essentials: what must get done, the domino tasks that will make everything else run more smoothly or be unnecessary, and, of course, don’t forget to make room for things that refuel your energy such as Bible study and exercise.
Focus on doing what matters to you each day, whether it be spending time with your family or tackling a home improvement project, and be intentional about saving the energy and time to make it happen.
Get help. If you need time to declutter, organize, or work on a project, perhaps swap child care with a friend, or find a “mommy’s helper” to come in and watch the kids for a period of time so you can focus all your attention on the task at hand.

So instead of multitasking, you can be far more effective at home by intently focusing on one task at a time. Try it and see how much you can accomplish!