No work chats after 6PM, multitasking is ‘bad’ for performance: Zerodha CEO – Times of India

In an unusual move, given the work culture in India, Zerodha CEO and founder Nithin Kamath announced that Zerodha has stopped all work-related chats after 6PM and on holidays. Kamath is checking out whether this move helps reduce stress among employees. Interestingly, he also said that “multitasking hurts performance” while referring to a post on YCombinator.
This comes as a surprise because most startups and founders believe in the “hustle culture”– something Elon Musk himself strongly believes in. At a time when young techies feel proud of how less they sleep and how much more they can work, Kamath’s tweets stand out.
“At Zerodha, we have just killed all work-related chats post 6 pm & holidays. Also trying to get as many conversations to be asynchronous, moving them from chat to our internal instance of
@discourse. Curious to see if this helps reduce the feeling of burnt out & brain fried,” tweeted Kamath.
He added, “Apparently, multitasking hurts performance and may even damage the brain…”
Talking about multitasking, another techie echoed on the post, “I have been noticing the impact of excessive multitasking on myself lately, and I am now actively trying to avoid it. At first i thought that multitasking would increase my overall efficiency by filling in gaps of downtime in certain tasks, but it soon turned me into a person incapable of focusing on anything deeply. One day, I noticed that I am unable to read a book the same way i did as a child (cover to cover in one sitting for example), and it kind of shocked me.”
Techies talking about taking breaks, not working always and ditching multitasking sound something unheard of until now. But Kamath’s tweet may give you a reason to think again before you feel guilty of not hustling enough.