There is No Such Thing as Multi-tasking!
This is part 8 of a 14 part series describing my professional philosophy. Part 7 can be found here.
How many teleconferences, virtual calls, or workshops where you have participated and someone in the session asks another participant a question and the response is almost always something like, “Sorry, I was multitasking. Can you repeat that?”
As my idol, Peter Griffin, would say — “That really grinds my gears!”
I’m sure it has the same effect on you.
Let’s face it — there is nothing more rude or unprofessional than NOT FOCUSING on a session which you were invited to or felt you should attend.
Try giving it your all and you won’t have to embarrassingly admit that you weren’t paying attention.
Which leads me to point 7 of my 12-point tenets for success:
There is no such thing as multi-tasking. There is only switch-tasking and it’s a crime because it steals from your productivity.
I must accredit David Crenshaw for the second half of the quote. You can find his Time Management Fundamentals course via LinkedIn Learning here.
“But wait,” you might say. “I’m really good at multitasking. I do it all the time.”
No, you don’t.
You are effectively moving focus from one task to another without completion of the previous task. Each time you move to the new task, you need to reorient where you are, what you are doing, and then execute. That consumes time.
When I present my Time Management workshop to clients and colleagues, I include a quick interactive example to demonstrate the effect. I won’t go into here — reach out to me if you’d like to hear about it.
However, it is extremely effective at demonstrating how much time switching focus can take from you versus staying on one task at a time.
“But Mike”, you might interject. “I have way too much on my plate and I have to get things done during these calls!”
I hear you and I empathize — I‘ve been there.
It doesn’t change the fact that focusing on other tasks takes away from your focus to the call. But here are some tips:
1. Don’t join or accept calls if you need to focus on other things. Ask for a link to the recording, detailed action items for yourself, or get a quick run down from another call participant or AI if it was used. No matter what — don’t join the call if you know you won’t be paying attention.
2. Stop using the phrase ‘multi-tasking’ in your professional and personal life. When it comes to cognitive, deep-thought, and focus requiring activities — your brain can only do one at a time. Prof. Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow explains this little phenomenon about our feeble little thinking organs so much better than I can. But it’s an empirically proven bug of our gray matter. Go ahead, do a quick search online for “can the human brain focus on two things at once” and see the results. Then come back here — I’ll wait. See? I was that shocked when I learned about it too. It’ll be ok, you just need to adjust and you will see improvements in your focusing on priority tasks.
3. Which leads me to the last tip — get your priority items in order for you to determine what has your attention. I won’t use Stephen Covey or David Allen quotes here, but they are all right. You need to understand what your immediate priorities are and work on those. Yes, we all get pulled in a million directions with interruptions, emergencies, direct reports’ needs, and a ton of questions either digitally or in person. You must take control of your calendar, devices, and key activities to get moving in the right direction. Inform your supervisor, team members, and direct reports that you are ‘heads down’ on a task for the next hour or so and everything must wait — try it out and see the results. I bet you’ll be surprised at how accommodating others will be when you inform them that you need to focus. If you deliver and complete your activities — people will respect your time. And you must reciprocate! Respect others’ time when you see the ‘do not disturb’ on their online status. Send the message later or on a scheduled delay.
If we all respect each other’s focus needs, we may actually see some progress in the right direction without having to lie and say things like, “I was multi-tasking.”
There ain’t no such thing as multi-tasking Champ — you’re just stealing time from others around you.
Stop it.