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Why doing less is the key to getting more done

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Shutterstock

Our busy lives are driving us to distraction. If many hands make light work, multitasking requires about eight, switching between tabs, flicking between text messages, filling out crosswords and shuffling songs like a human octopus.

Thankfully, the cult of the multitasker is facing a stern challenge from the mindful “monotasker”, the latest leitmotif from Silicon Valley CEO-types determined to apply a single, zen-like focus to tasks until they are complete. A study by Stanford University showed that people who regularly multitask are a lot worse at basic tests of spatial perception, memory and selective attention than people who don’t.

The gauntlet has been thrown down. Elon Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO, whose interests range from putting a man on Mars to rolling out electric cars across gas-guzzling America, is a firm advocate of monotasking — or “process isolation”, as he puts it. In brief, Musk thinks of his brain as a computer browser — if too many tabs are open, the whole thing freezes. This increased time that it takes to switch from one task to another, when you are trying to carry out too many, is known as the “cognitive switching penalty”, and is detrimental to thinking clearly.

So what are the rules?

Screening process

If you have a second screen, as every self-respecting London multi-tasker does, then you need to ditch it: you are suffering from optic whiplash going back and forth between the two. Toggling between your work and messaging software such as Outlook, Bloomberg or Slack is also out: set out regimented chunks of time to reply to messaging throughout the day, in the morning, afternoon and evening.

All talk

Conversation is a two-way street, and distractions are detrimental to it. Research shows that simply having a phone on the table is sufficiently distracting to reduce empathy and rapport between two people in conversation. Multi-part questions should also be streamlined. Journalists have been advised to stop asking multi-part questions of Donald Trump at Slate magazine — be blunt, the theory is, you might learn something.

Work it out

If you’ve got a big task at hand, the last thing you need to distract you is a hyperactive mailbox. Hop on a treadmill, go for a run or hit the pool to escape the rat race and gain some perspicuity. Studies have shown that interspersed aerobic-style activities improve concentration: a 2016 study of Dutch schoolchildren showed that 20-minute physical activity bouts significantly increased “selective attention”.

In too deep

While we celebrate dexterity, we are evidently not evolved to cope. Cal Newport, an associate professor of computer science at Georgetown University and the author of Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, is a firm advocate of “deep work”, in which one commits at least 90 minutes to any task, putting it in the calendar and determining to completing it.

Home comforts

At home, don’t tweet through television shows. The more distracted you are, the less you will enjoy the tasks you set yourself as your attention divides. Musk is no fool. If we apply ourselves with focus, the sky’s the limit.

Follow Samuel Fishwick: @fish_o_wick