Bringing Your Best: Making Monotasking Cool Again

This article was inspired by a recent session in a Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills group. During the session, our group was studying the “how” skills needed to take hold of our minds and improve our overall well-being. It was particularly impactful to hear about the “one-mindfully” part of the section, where the focus was on doing one thing at a time. The idea of monotasking as a way to reduce stress, increase focus and improve productivity really resonated with me and inspired me to explore this topic further.

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With the type of fast-paced, competitive and highly digitized ecosystem we live in, it’s painstakingly clear that a lot of people have been plagued by this unshakeable sense of mindlessness. This mindlessness has been brought on by the onslaught of multitasking. 

Think about it. We’re repetitively engaged in writing and receiving emails, getting texts, checking for notifications, etc. — things that are gradually peeling off our ability to stay focused on one thing. 

What’s scary is that this consistent drop in our levels of attention can have negative health implications and adversely impact our productivity and can potentially plague our community and workplace culture. 

Fortunately, there is a way we can transition toward achieving mindfulness, contentment and gratitude by inclining toward monotasking and self-love. 

Multitasking has undoubtedly become a cultural constant in the past decade or so. It’s widely propelled by constant digital innovations, giving us access to a plethora of information right at our fingertips. However, multitasking seems to have also encouraged this culture of growing distractions. Everywhere you look, people are motivated to do more, to do things faster, to constantly stay connected, etc. 

But you’d be surprised to know that research highlights that multitasking is far more wasteful compared to monotasking. Why? Well, no matter how good of a multitasker you are, it will always take you more time to switch between tasks, which can inadvertently cause you to make more mistakes. You risk deteriorating the quality of your work. 

The adverse impacts of multitasking can be seen as a type of “mindlessness” as it takes away our ability to focus and remain concentrated in the moment. It makes it difficult to stay attentive to the task at hand. 

Multitasking can also cause a gradual build-up of stress and anxiety, lead to a drop in productivity, and cause a decline in creativity and problem-solving. It can even impact our ability to remember things. Overall, all of these things can eventually impact our well-being.  

What’s even worse is that mindlessness can also hinder our ability to become effective leaders. When managers and team leaders engross themselves in juggling different tasks simultaneously, they are bound to miss the opportunity to engage with their team members. Because they aren’t present in their moment, they simply won’t prioritize connecting with their teammates.  

This can be detrimental to your effectiveness as a leader and can eventually lead your team members to garner mistrust and disloyalty, and could end up becoming less engaging with you. In addition, mindlessness can also deteriorate a leader’s capacity to empathize with their team members, making it even harder for the team to develop strong relationships and could promote a more negative work environment. 

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So, is there a way we can achieve mindfulness and reduce the consequences of multitasking? The answer can be found in monotasking and embracing gratitude in our day-to-day lives. 

Monotasking allows us to pay attention to a single task at a time. It teaches us the ability to stay present in the moment, lessening our work-related stress and anxieties. It can help us elevate our focus and gradually enhance our well-being.  

According to research, gratitude plays a pivotal role in awakening parts of the brain linked to attention control and mindfulness, both of which are important for monotasking. Being grateful in our daily lives sparks activity in the prefrontal cortex (an area of the brain associated with things like decision-making, attention control and emotional regulation).  

Gratitude is also shown to enhance mindfulness, which is the practice of being aware of the “self” and constantly staying concentrated in any moment. It is the ability to positively interact with our surroundings. By practicing mindfulness, gratitude can help lower our stress and anxiety — both of which can cause a lot of distractions in everything we do and is especially detrimental to monotasking.  

Moreover, gratitude can also help optimize emotional regulation, heightening our ability to manage and positively respond to our emotions. This, in turn, can help us stay focused, calm and determined even in the most challenging of tasks, both emotional and physical. 

Top Four Monotasking Tips You Can Use To Stay Focused And Creative 

So let’s take a look at a few ways you can make changes and stick to one task.

1. Select a dedicated place to work: The task here is to find a place at home or your office where you can work without falling prey to any distractions. 

2. Don’t be distracted by notifications: The easiest way to not be bothered by notifications is, simply, to turn them off. You can even turn on the Do Not Disturb feature on your phone or use productivity apps to stay focused. 

3. Dedicate some time to being creative: Set aside a couple of hours in your day to focus on monotasking. During this time, try to avoid multitasking. You can dedicate two to four hours per day to concentrating on important tasks.  

4. Make it social: I belong to a community called Cave Day, which helps leaders and creatives bring monotasking into their lives through the power of community. We log onto our zoom screens, set monotasking intentions with each other, and then go to work for the next 45-50 minutes. It’s been tremendously impactful!

We live in a world that’s heavily fused with mindlessness as a result of ingratitude, malcontent and multitasking. But by embracing gratitude in your daily life and by committing to monotasking, it is possible to break free and transition toward mindfulness to consistently enrich your well-being, stay productive and focused and improve your overall culture.