Dan Harris: Think You're a Good Multitasker? Stop Lying. | Big Think

What I love about this notion of multitasking is people brag about how good they are at it. In fact, it's a lie. It's a lie we're telling ourselves over and over again.

I have a friend named Janice Marano, who's a former executive at General Mills, and she now teaches meditation to corporate executives all over America and all over the world. As she pointed out to me, multitasking is a computer-derived term. Computers have many processors; we have only one processor. We literally neurologically cannot do more than one thing at a time.

So every time you think you're multitasking, essentially that's a short way of saying you're doing many things poorly. What I've learned to do, and it's hard, is to try to do one thing at a time. So if I'm on the phone, I turn off my computer monitor and actually listen—radical as it may sound—to the person to whom I'm speaking.

If I'm working on a story at work, writing a story, I shut down my email and try to actually focus on what I'm doing. What I found is that I move through my tasks in a much more rapid way and a much more effective way, and I'm doing a better job.

Now, I'm not going to lie to you; there are times when we have to multitask; there's no question about it. Things get so hectic in my office, and I'm sure in the lives of anybody who's watching this, where multitasking becomes impossible to avoid.

I found myself walking down the hallway the other day with a glass of water hanging out of my mouth, and I'm typing away on my BlackBerry and walking at the same time. So I'm a huge hypocrite on this score; there's no question about it. But I do my best to avoid it because I know I do my best work when I'm only doing one thing at a time.