Singletasking

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Someone recently asked me about a term I use in my Twitter bio.

What do you mean by singletasker?

Let me tell you a story; a long time ago, when I was very fresh to the concept of productivity, multitasking was the hot word. There were books on how to "effectively" multitask, there were countless videos, posts, and podcasts talking about the magic of getting multiple things done at the same time. Everybody wanted to learn these magical tricks, so the productivity gurus were happily providing content, no matter if these methods were truly working or not.

Unfortunately, a book claiming to present "10 steps to effective multitasking" is in its own nature, untrue. Why? Multitasking is simply ineffective.

Meaningful work requires meaningful time to be put into it. You can't be magically jumping from one task to another and expecting real results. Focusing on everything means focusing on nothing, remember?

Singletasking is the antidote to that. It's the idea of purposefully working on one thing at a time. Heck, not only working, but just doing all things one at a time. Vacuuming and listening to a podcast? Give me a break.

No matter how hard you try, all multitasking leads to context switching, which leads to nothing actually getting done.

Get shit done. Become a singletasker.