Have you ever tried doing just one thing at a time? It sounds easy, but for many people like me—those dealing with chronic fatigue or other fatigue-related conditions—single-tasking is pretty damn hard.
You would think that if you constantly feel tired or brain foggy, the idea of only having to focus on one thing would be enticing. After all, doing just one thing sounds a heck of a lot easier than having to do a bunch of stuff at the same time.
But, ironically, the urge to multitask is strong, even in those of us with low energy.
Why Is It Hard to Single-Task?
If you read my previous post on why multitasking isn’t the best option, you will see that it doesn’t really help you manage the time and energy limitations of chronic fatigue better. But if the alternative is to single-task instead, why does it seem so hard for us to do that?
There are several potential reasons why we cling to the multitasking habit:
- We feel pressured to get so much more done in a day than is realistic.
- The push for higher productivity is rampant in our society.
- Hustle culture (which is thankfully becoming less popular) encourages everyone to get more done by working longer and harder.
This is evidenced by all the social media posts featuring kick-ass boss babes or supermoms getting s*** done.
You may even see it in friends, family members, or acquaintances who load up their schedules and pride themselves on having something to do every minute of the day, whether for work or pleasure. They love to share how full their social calendar is and seem terrified at the thought of having a weekend day with nothing planned. Oh, the horror!
On the other hand, I absolutely love unplanned free time. It truly brings me joy! That could be an introvert thing, but boy does it feel good to see that open space on my Google Calendar.
Another reason we may fall victim to the siren call of multitasking:
We feel anxious, tired, or overwhelmed (or all three!).
When overwhelmed with a long to-do list, multitasking may feel like the only way to get everything done in less time. It can serve as a way to alleviate anxiety about all the tasks piling up around you.
Easing into Single-Tasking with Task Batching
Task batching has some similarities to time blocking, but the main focus of task batching is to group similar tasks together. The idea behind this is that you will spend less time “task switching” and exert less mental energy if you work on similar tasks during one chunk of time.
What does task batching look like in practice? That depends a lot on the type of work you do. But let’s start with an example that is applicable to most people: email.
You could check your email only during designated times, such as at the beginning of your work day, after lunch, and before leaving work. During your designated email time, you avoid jumping back and forth between other tasks. And you also avoid checking your email at any other time.
How often you check your email is up to you, depending on the type of work you do and how truly urgent certain emails may be.
If you want to ease your way into single-tasking, I recommend starting with this valuable tip:
Close your email tab when you’re working on other things.
This is a form of accidental multitasking, which I completely overlooked. I often keep my emails open in a tab, and whenever I see one pop up, I instantly check to see what it is. And how often is it really urgent? Truthfully, not often at all.
If you’re worried about missing an important email, consider compromising by only checking your email once per hour. Or change the notification settings in your email so you’re only notified of specific types of emails or emails coming from certain people.
But for most of us, it really isn’t necessary to view each email as the notification pops up on your screen. This pulls you away from whatever task you are working on, which decreases your efficiency, increases stress, and impacts the quality of your work. It’s also not great for brain health.
And the great thing about task batching is that it is versatile. If your work or personal life doesn’t involve lots of emails, you can apply the task batching method to how often you check your text messages or social media accounts.
Still Struggling with Single-Tasking?
Since we’re so used to multitasking all day long, it can feel tough to try to slow down and single task.
Accept that it will likely be challenging at first.
You may be tempted to attend to whatever distraction pops up because that’s what you’ve always done. But resist the urge. Acknowledge it but don’t follow through on it. Over time, this will get easier and easier.
A few tips to set you up for single-tasking success:
Turn Off Notifications on Your Phone and Computer
Turn off notifications or at least silence your phone. If you’re working on your computer, turn off notifications there unless they’re relevant to what you’re working on at the time.
Leave Your Phone Out of Sight
One tremendous way to overcome the hurdle of multitasking is to stop looking at your phone so much. Many people now look at their phones while doing just about everything, whether it’s brushing their teeth, playing with their kids, or even while watching TV. Try leaving your phone where you can’t reach it while you engage in other tasks or activities.
Close Unnecessary Browser Tabs
Brain fog is a common symptom of chronic fatigue and other autoimmune conditions, so by reducing the number of tabs open, literally and figuratively, you give yourself a better chance of being able to focus by not overloading your brain with things that you really don’t need to be paying attention to at the moment.
Write It Down
If you’re really struggling to focus because you have a million thoughts running through your mind of things you need to do or don’t want to forget, take a break and write down everything going through your mind. Just get it all out of your head and onto paper. Then, once you feel like you’ve gotten everything out, you can resume the task you were doing.
Try the Pomodoro Technique
Many health conditions, like chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia, can make it difficult to focus. Plus in today’s society, everything is so fast-paced, and there are so many distractions that the odds are stacked against us when we really try to focus and do just one thing at a time.
Don’t beat yourself up over it. Instead, try single tasking in small sprints rather than long stretches.
You can try the Pomodoro technique, which centers around focusing for 25 minutes and taking 5-minute breaks. Then after three 25-minute focus sessions, you take a 15-minute break. There are some great free apps, like Todoist, that can make it easy to track your time.
When you struggle with focus, 25 minutes can feel like an eternity. So start small. You can even try setting the timer for 5 minutes of focus. Then once you get the hang of that and it becomes easier, you can slowly build your way up, one minute at a time.
Reevaluate Your To-Do List
If you’re drowning in unfinished tasks, it may be time to take a close look at your to-do list and decide what is truly important and what is not. Ideally, you would pick the top three most important tasks (MITs) that need to be completed each day. Then, you can rank anything left on the list in order of importance.
Sometimes, we feel overwhelmed because we put unnecessary pressure on ourselves to complete everything on our list when many of the tasks don’t really need to be completed that day.
Show yourself some compassion, and make your daily to-do list more manageable. Anything not urgent can get added to a general “someday” list, or if something needs to be completed by a certain time, you can add it to a weekly or monthly to-do list.
Also, consider whether you are taking on too much. Is there anything on your list that can delegated?
How Can You Use Task Batching Outside of Your Work Life?
Task batching is not just for work. You can alleviate stress and help prevent brain fog from getting worse by single-tasking in your everyday life. How? Use the task batching method to lump together similar activities.
For example, set a designated day to pay your bills. This could be once a week or every two weeks, depending on your financial situation and when your bills are due.
Meal prepping is another way to task batch so you can get a lot of cooking done in a shorter time than if you were to cook separate meals every day.
One activity that may be tough to task batch if you have chronic fatigue is household chores. I understand that some people like to do a marathon cleaning once every week or two, but this can lead to post-exertional malaise (PEM) for many people struggling with fatigue. We’ll look into solutions for managing household chores with chronic fatigue in a future post.
