Why multitasking isn’t a skill to aspire to after all…

I have been involved with the Business Women’s Networking Group, Women on Wednesday or WoW, in Salisbury since not long after I moved to the West Country from London nearly twelve years ago. This group has been a fantastic support to me as a self-employed person. I received a lot of help as I was building Natural Healing Energy in this new area and I also made some good friends along the way.

 
Creating a Support Network

One of the hardest things for me about leaving my job in the National Health Service was losing my team. When you work for a large organisation there is nearly always a big team of people around you and so there was always someone ‘to ask’ if I had a problem with something. Some of the business women and entrepreneurs I have met through WoW have gone a long way to fill that gap for me and for that I feel very grateful.

As a business networking group one of the things we do is to ask members to provide articles offering information or advice that is of benefit to other women in business. Today I sat down to write an article for my own website, which will be coming soon!. As I began writing I realised that the article I wrote some time ago for WoW might also have a lot of benefit for my Natural Healing Energy clients and students so I thought I would take the opportunity to share it here.
 
Overwhelm and Doing Too Much

So many of us suffer from feelings of overwhelm, have trouble switching our brains off and find it very difficult to relax. We live in a world where we are constantly invited to cram more and more into already full days and over time this can seriously deplete us and lead to many physical, mental and emotional stresses. One of the ways we often attempt to fit this ever-increasing list of tasks in is by trying to do more than one thing at once. This ‘skill’ of multitasking is one that is often revered and admired and also considered something that, perhaps stereotypically, women are good at and men aren’t. Over my years of learning about humans through my work and studies I have come to the conclusion that none of us are in fact very good at it. From a neurological point of view, splitting our brain’s attention to more than one task at the same time isn’t even truly possible and we usually just end up doing two more things ineffectively and in a more stressful and tiring manner.

You can read more about my thoughts on multitasking on the Women on Wednesday website. I’d love to hear what you think about multitasking so please click This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if you’d like to share your own thoughts on the subject.