I wanted to write a post on something that SO many people seem to be unaware of. A lot of people, especially when trying to be more efficient, do something called 'multi-tasking'. It's a broad term, but it essentailly means doing two or more things at once. The problem is, this actually doesn't work; in fact, it makes you even LESS efficient. Now there are a HANDFUL of exceptions when one activity requires almost no cognitive effort, you could do another activity that requires cognitive effort (e.g I sometimes like to go hiking while listening to an audio-book, although I turn it off during the best part of the hike so I fully 'take it in'). I also know that when listening to that audiobook and hiking, I'm not getting QUITE the same level of focus as if I was sitting down, and I also wouldn't get quite the same level of pleasure of taking everything in.

Now, onto the more common examples. Multi-tasking two things at at a time that both require cognitive resources is one of the worst decisions you can make. Your frontal cortex can only focus on one thing at a time, and it's important to utilize this on one thing at a time.

Don't think that by studying and having netflix on in the background you are both getting studying completed, and receiving pleasure from watching Netflix; at any point in time you are either listening to the tv, or reading your book, but you CANNOT do both at the same time. What typically happens to these people is there attention goes back and forth between work and pleasure, and the brain will tend to follow the more 'interesting' activity, such as TV. You also no longer set up a reward contingency in this circumstance. By focusing on the work activity for a set period of time, and then FULLY enjoying netflix afterwards, you are actually being much more efficient; when you go back and forth between the two things, you are inherently becoming increasingly less efficient. Then what do you do when you're done? Watch more TV? If you don't reward yourself immediately after studying, your brain will want to study less in the future, so it actually ruins your motivation as well.

So just a brief reminder to only do one thing at a time, with the occasional exception. I wouldn't recommend doing an audio-book at the gym as you need that focus on lifting, but if you were doing a brisk jog on the treadmill, you might be okay. Don't EVER do cognitively demanding activities at the same time, it just doesn't work; what is more interesting, however, is that you actually tend to feel more efficient at the time, but are wrong. Good luck everyone!