Monotasking - Rebecca Leary

When I saw what the blog assignment was, I knew exactly what I could apply Paolo Cardini’s idea of “monotasking” to. I had my first chemistry exam today, and I knew that this idea of “monotasking” would be a very efficient way to help prepare myself for the exam. Now to be completely honest, it was pretty difficult to focus only on chemistry without having my usual distractions to turn to if I needed a little bit of a break. For example, whenever I am doing anything, I always have music playing in the background. If not music, then I will have some other kind of background noise because I can’t stand being in silence. The silence was definitely the hardest thing to adjust to while I was “monotasking”. I also didn’t have my phone around me to continuously check Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook whenever I got bored with studying, but I know that not having these distractions was ultimately really helpful in being able to focus all of my attention in studying my chemistry notes. It was nice to concentrate entirely on my chemistry so that I knew that I was getting the most that I could out of it, but I would definitely choose to at least have a little bit of music playing in the background while I was studying any other time.

In reality, I think that the idea of “monotasking” is too much to ask of today’s society, and this is why the majority of our class most likely struggled with it. With today’s technology, it is just too easy to switch back and forth between things, such as checking my news feed on Facebook while at the same time writing a paper for my English class. When I compare multitasking and monotasking, I think, ‘Why would I focus on doing just one task when I can accomplish more than one at the same time?’