You fancy yourself the Master of Multitasking - You and thousands of other women. I count myself among them.

But here's the rub. While multitasking at home might work (juggling meal preparation, chores, taking care of kids, etc), in the office it doesn't. Every time you get interrupted (or allow yourself to be interrupted) you waste valuable time and energy.

Think about the differences in the tasks you perform between home and the office:

At home you're doing multiple things at the same time that don't require a lot of thinking. No brain energy is required to get dinner on the table, talk to your 5-year-old, and make tomorrow's lunches at the same time.

At the office, almost everything you do requires some kind of brain energy. The proposal you need to write, client emails that need to be answered, and phone calls you need to make.

It's a Lie

Contrary to what we've been led to believe in the past, our brains can't process more than one thing at a time.

Email is one of the biggest distractions for most people. You hear the ding of new mail in your inbox and feel compelled to see who it's from. STOP! Every time you stop what you're doing to check an email, it takes, on average, 64 seconds to get back to your task. How many emails do you check each day while doing something else? How much wasted time does that add up to?

Apply that to all the things you multitask. The time it takes to get back to what's really important might change, but the fact that you waste time remains a constant, and you can never get it back.

Step off the merry-go-round. You're likely not among the 3% of the population who are truly gifted multitaskers so stop! Focus on one thing, complete it, then move on. Your emails can wait.

I'm still guilty of multitasking but I'm far better than I used to be at focusing on one thing at a time. It makes a difference. I guarantee, nobody's going to think less of you if you wait to look at and respond to, email.

Read 5 Quick Tips to Stop Multitasking to break the habit, and start getting more done.