Slow Down to Get More Done

May 9, 2008— -- When you sit down at your computer to log on, do you type the password really fast because you're in a hurry, only to have to retype it because you typed it wrong? And then you type it even faster because you've already lost time, mistyping it the first time? And maybe you have to re-enter it three or four or five times because you keep missing a key?

Why do so many people think they're getting more done by going faster? Often, we really aren't. The fact is that sometimes the faster we go, the less productive we are.

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"'I can't get it all done during the day' is something I hear over and over again," says John Medina, a developmental molecular biologist and the author of the new book "Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home and School."

His work documents how the time pressures of work, school and life in our 24/7 age have created deep-seated problems for many of us.

"More and more tasks are being assigned to fewer and fewer people," he notes.

Then, there are the additional tasks we assign to ourselves, by scheduling our days so tightly that we leave no margin for running even five minutes late.

"I think we are in the beginning stages of understanding that that model is actually toxic," he says. "More and more people are rising up and saying, you know, there is something wrong with me. I'm not enjoying my life. I'm not a suicidal person, I'm not a depressed person, but this sucks."

This is a serious issue with Medina, a large part of the reason he wrote his book. Time pressures, he is convinced, are slamming our brains, draining the joy -- and ability to think clearly and create effectively -- right out of people's lives.

"They're beginning to see it because their time has been too structured. And they're beginning to understand that unstructured time may be the great ventilation," says Medina.

And, he says, unstructured time -- the opposite of "multitasking" -- is actually more productive.

"One of the great frustrations I have is with the concept of multitasking because, to put it bluntly, the brain is incapable of multitasking," he says.