Mono Tasking

Ya, I can do 2 things at once. But I don’t really consider scratching my butt and picking my nose at the same time a productivity coup d’etat.

I was at one point drawn into the whole Multi Tasking void.  At the time it sounded like a good thing. Get more done and do it in less time! The whole office was buzzing around trying to do several things at once.  Everyone thought this was great. And then requests started in for more devices and software to be aquired that were marketed to the “MultiTasker”. After several years of having each hand on a seperate keyboard, a voice activated headset so I didn’t have to stop to answer the phone, and a pager so I could field issues when I was away from my desk, some things started to become apparent.

“I wasn’t really more productive. I was busier, but I was getting less done.”

After attending a seminar with Tolly Burkin, the lightbulb truely went on. He professed:

“Pay attention 100% to the task at hand. Complete it, and then move on to the next.”

But wait, I thought we were all Multitaskers at the core and would be better at our jobs and life because of it?

So I devised a little experiment. I created a prioritized task list for each day. The first day I ran in the usual multitasker format, but I logged the time on each item and marked which tasks were completed.

The next day I did the same, only this time I performed the tasks serially, following Tolly’s Mantra: “Pay attention 100%”.

Can you guess what the results were? Uh huh! I finished day 2’s list with time to spare, while only a few of the items on day 1’s list were completed!

Aside from the obvious, this created several things for me.

1. I got more work done, and it was done better
2. I didn’t waste nearly as much time
3. Putting attention on one item at a time, provided a greater sense of accomplishment and enjoyment
4. The day wasn’t finished with my head feeling like it was filled with wet sand.

In conclusion, being a metrics driven type, only one path became the clear choice. Approach tasks in a serial fashion and get more done, waste less energy, enjoy my work more, and have more time and energy left at the end of the day. I have expanded on this to include almost eveything I do in my daily life, from shopping, cooking, paying bills, and working in the yard. The possibilities are limitless. So nextime you end up with several things to accomplish, try making a list prioritize it, work on and complete one event at a time, then move on to the next.  I assure you that, while you may not finish everything on the list (that is not the goal), you will enjoy it more, get more done, and be fresher for what evercomes next in your day!

Previously published at http://jim-wyse.com/blog/entry/mono_tasking