If people nowadays were made to wear a scarlet letter for the sin of multi-tasking, I’d definitely be sporting a giant letter M. With three children under the age of 7, two cats, a rabbit and a job that keeps me hopping, life isn’t meant to be in slow motion.….more like hyper speed. Shamefully, it isn’t uncommon for me to simultaneously be preparing lunches, handling a call and breaking up a Star Wars light saber duel between the boys while challenging nest-size knots in my daughter’s hair.

But when it comes to your business, multi-tasking to the nth degree just isn’t something you want to toy with. Cutting corners, sloppy mistakes…all end up causing more harm than the time/cost savings the multi-tasking meant to enhance. A Hewlett Packard study even showed a person’s IQ dropped an astonishing 10 points while multitasking. Believe it or not, that is more than double the four point drop that occurs when someone smokes marijuana. Stick that statistic in your pipe and smoke it!…or maybe not.

I don’t think that in our fast-paced society, we’ll ever see an end to a multi-tasking addiction, and it is possible for some to multi-task to some extent. For example, people speak about 150 words/minute, but the average person can listen to 400-500 words/minute, so that allows for a bit of multi-tasking wiggle room, if you’re really good. However, it has been proven time and again that multi-tasking actually makes you less efficient, rather than more efficient.

Multitasking decreases your memory ability. For every new task that you take on, you dilute your investment in each task; things begin to fall through the cracks and the task ends up taking more time in the long run.

Perhaps it is time to accept that you could use a little help. And when you come to that crossroads, make sure you’ve got an expert in your corner to tie up your loose ends. At corecubed, we specialize in fulfilling all of your marketing needs, including internet marketing, print design, social media and more. Let us help you come up with a plan to make your business hum on all six cylinders. Contact us today.

Sources: Creative Training Excellence Inc. and Gender Differences in Multitasking by Brandy R. Criss, Dept. of Psychology, MWSU