Simple Time Management For Copywriters – Stop Multitasking, It’s Bad For You…

In the US this week they have ‘Single-Tasking Day’.

The whole idea is to do one task at a time during day and stop multitasking for once in your life.

See the thing is, according to experts, multitasking could well be bad for you.

In fact, studies from University of Michigan and UCLA indicate Multi-tasking forces our brains to continually perform “Task Switching” which makes our brains work harder with less efficiency.  Some researchers believe this could even cause brain damage! So sorry ladies, but us guys had it right all along!

Now  Single-Tasking Day is meant to help us focus on one activity at a time and NOT do anything else until its complete. A tall order in this day and age, but with anything like this, you have to be ruthless to see it through.

Now as a copywriter, I picked up a great tip to help with this very thing. It came from copywriting legend Gene Schwartz.

He used to advise young copywriters to prevent distractions by using a kitchen timer.

He’d set the timer to 33 minutes and work solidly on the copy he was writing until the bell rang. Then he’d take a 5 minute break doing something completely different to rest his brain, then set the timer to 33 minutes again and so on.

I use this technique a lot and it works fine for me.

So give it a go and find a time setting that works for you. That way, everyday will be Single-Tasking Day and you won’t have to think about it.

Tags: copywriting, Gene Schwartz, strategies, time management