"Multitasking doesn't boost productivity- it slows you down." -Dave Crenshaw

            This weeks readings were focused around one thing: how to become an effective worker. One article I read stood out the most to me. “The Myth of Multitasking,” interviewed Dave Crenshaw about today’s problems with switchtasking.

            Most of us wouldn’t even realize what this is. People, myself included, believe that because we are getting more done in a shorter amount of time we are working efficiently. This isn’t necessarily true though. How much time do we waste when our mind is trying to switch from one focus to another? The quality of our work also suffers. Dave Crenshaw states, “Multitasking doesn’t boost productivity- it slows you down.”

            I didn’t see this at first. But after reading this article it was made very clear to me just how true this is. While working, I am always on twitter, facebook, or youtube. Such distractions are going to prolong the activity that you are doing. It is also distracting your mind and making you focus on different things. During class this week we learned how it is important to take agency and use the resources to produce college level work. Is this even possible with everything around us is just plain distracting?

            While sitting in the common room reading these articles, I was greeted by a constant flow of people coming in and out. That’s when I truly saw that Dave was trying to say. Life is going to continue even when we are doing things but we need to train our mind to focus on certain things. This will in turn make the quality of our work better and will make the time used for doing these actions shorter.

            Some tricks I have thought of to focus on the task at hand are listed below:

·      Turn off technologies- stay off twitter and facebook, keep the television off, and stay off your phone.

·      Plan ahead- gather what you need before you sit down and try to work. This will reduce the amount of time thinking if you have something and travel time.

·      Make a list- make a list of everything you need to do for the day so you can focus on one thing at a time.

Hopefully these tricks will help focus our minds to produce the best work we can create. While being in college, we need to actually juggle large amounts of work and to stop switchtasking will be one way we can become more effective in life.

Here is the article that inspired me to rethink how I work:

           http://lifehacker.com/5041144/debunking-the-myth-of-multitasking