What makes you feel better, go running, meet friends, prepare nice
dinner, finish your work and watch a movie, or just only focus in one activity,
such as meeting your friends?
What give us more happiness, the joy of doing lots of things, or the
satisfaction of doing only one but more accurate and in a better way?
The investigations from Jordan Etkin, Cassie Mogilner (2015) reached
to the conclusion that it depends on the
amount of time we have to perform the activities we do enjoy more doing high
variety of tasks or just focus in one activity. The measure of happiness was
based on two questions: How happy do you feel right now? And how satisfied do
you feel right now?
Shorter the time is, we prefer focus. Longer the time is, it gets all about diversity in the tasks.
So as we can see in the graphic, the threshold is in 1-hour-duration
activities. So according to this investigation, if we have less than one hour, focusing
in fewer tasks will give us more satisfaction. But in the other hand, more than
1 hour may be marginally you got more satisfaction by solving high variety of tasks.
It is all about the sensation of productivity. More accomplished tasks in the same period of
time makes people feel they are taking advantage of time. But nothing is free
in life (isn’t it?), changing activities results in energy and cognitive resources
spending. So people stress and loss productivity by switching their tasks. As
conclusion, shorter periods just do not put up for the cost of changing so it
is more efficient to focus in fewer tasks.
All of these insights are very important when it comes to organize the
schedule. “Although repetition can make workers more productive in the
short-term, the lack of stimulation eventually detracts from their happiness.
So within an hour, tasks should be kept consistent to increase productivity,
but across days, tasks should be varied to maintain stimulation and interest.”
So be careful, organize yourself and be happier!!