Does Multitasking Help Your Marketing Plan?

Is it better to focus time and energy on one project to generate leads and new business? Or will you see more results by dividing your time and energy among 10 different projects to enhance your marketing? Did you know that multitasking doesn’t actually increase productivity? The more projects we start and the more marketing we throw out there, often the less productive we become.

With multitasking in general, the thought is that because we are so busy, we must do more than one thing at a time to accomplish the growing list of activities that pull on our limited time. The facts prove, however, that although we feel we are getting more done, we are actually causing ourselves more work. Here are a few studies that may surprise you about how multitasking actually has a negative effect on productivity (and may even make you less intelligent).

When we multitask, (i.e., try to perform two or more related tasks at the same time or by alternating rapidly among them) errors greatly increase. That is according to a study done by David Meyer of The Brain, Cognition and Action Laboratory at the University of Michigan. Meyer and his team found that it actually takes far longer to get jobs done this way than if the tasks were done sequentially.