Multitasking might work when you're working on easy, non-scary tasks, but as a coach who helps people overcome procrastination and blocks I have seen repeatedly how multitasking is used as a form of procrastination. Most cases of procrastination are grounded in fear of change, success, failure, rejection, etc. - the procrastination is a defensive behavior designed to keep you from making progress and thus facing the thing you are afraid of. (And most of the fears are quite reasonable, btw, even if the procrastination itself is a suboptimal response to them.) This may seem counterintuitive, since the procrastinator typically is desperate to make progress and ashamed of his inability to do so, but what he doesn't recognize is that, underneath, his fears make him more desperate to stay stuck.
Procrastination is stealthy and pernicious. Often it masquerades as productive work, so the sufferer will be less motivated to fix a problem that he may not even recognize as such. Multitasking is often a form of procrastination in that the procrastinator busies himself with less important tasks instead of focusing on the more important, often scarier ones.
For more information on procrastination and how to overcome it, download my Creative Commons ebook, The Little Guide To Beating Procrastination, Perfectionism and Blocks: a Manual for Artists, Activists, Entrepreneurs, Academics and Other Ambitious Dreamers, from www.lifelongactivist.com/downloads .
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Multitasking might work when you're working on easy, non-scary tasks, but as a coach who helps people overcome procrastination and blocks I have seen repeatedly how multitasking is used as a form of procrastination. Most cases of procrastination are grounded in fear of change, success, failure, rejection, etc. - the procrastination is a defensive behavior designed to keep you from making progress and thus facing the thing you are afraid of. (And most of the fears are quite reasonable, btw, even if the procrastination itself is a suboptimal response to them.) This may seem counterintuitive, since the procrastinator typically is desperate to make progress and ashamed of his inability to do so, but what he doesn't recognize is that, underneath, his fears make him more desperate to stay stuck. Procrastination is stealthy and pernicious. Often it masquerades as productive work, so the sufferer will be less motivated to fix a problem that he may not even recognize as such. Multitasking is often a form of procrastination in that the procrastinator busies himself with less important tasks instead of focusing on the more important, often scarier ones. For more information on procrastination and how to overcome it, download my Creative Commons ebook, The Little Guide To Beating Procrastination, Perfectionism and Blocks: a Manual for Artists, Activists, Entrepreneurs, Academics and Other Ambitious Dreamers, from www.lifelongactivist.com/downloads .