Focus is king — multitasking is a thief
Multitasking can be a rather appealing word to use; “I’m a multitasker that works in high tempo, I love keeping busy “ It can sound pretty good in a CV/ bio, but is this really what we should be doing in order to be effective at work?
Maybe we are still stuck in the illusion that being a multitasker; makes us some kind of busy super woman/man doing all the task at once in ultra speed. We are often thinking that being busy means being effective.
We are even expected to multitask almost constantly in the times we are living in. The constant flow of media, TV, phones, music and always being connected at the same time as we are cooking, reading, shopping etc.
We even try to multitask in our work, reading emails at the same time as we are picking up the phone, working on several project daily trying to do as much as possible in the same day.
The problem is that not concentrating on one thing fully and give it the time, is not effective at all.
Check out this interesting test on Psychology Today. It’s a quick test to see how your brain works when doing the same task focused on one thing at the time vs doing the task simultaneously.
1. Draw two horizontal lines on a piece of paper
2. Now, have someone time you as you carry out the two tasks that follow:
- On the first line, write:
I am a great multitasker - On the second line: write out the numbers 1–20 sequentially, like those below:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
How much time did it take to do the two tasks? Usually it’s about 20 seconds.
Now, let’s multitask.
Draw two more horizontal lines. This time, and again have someone time you, write a letter on one line, and then a number on the line below, then the next letter in the sentence on the upper line, and then the next number in the sequence, changing from line to line. In other words, you write the letter “I” and then the number “1″ and then the letter “a” and then the number “2″ and so on, until you complete both lines.
I a…..
1 2…..
We switch and loose time
How did you find it? First of all we can see that we actually don’t do things at the same time, but we are only switching between the tasks with very short intervals. Secondly we see that by switching between two task we lose time, concentration and we even easily makes lots of errors. How much easier was it to write the whole sentence on the first two lines compared to the second when you did not wrote the full words at once?
We think we are more effective as we’re moving several things forward at once, but instead we waste time when we jump from one thing to the other.
It’s like if a sprint runner would have to jump in between several paths back and forth instead of getting up the speed on one path and actually reach the goal as fast as possible.
It’s also a big risk that the sprinter would stumble and fall when jumping between the paths…
Lots of studies also shows that the more complex tasks we are doing with task-switching the more time we lose. Natural activities are easier for the brain to do simultaneously and we can even do three or more things at once; eating, listen to music while we are reading a message.
But when we try to do things that demands more thinking from the brain we end up with bad quality results instead and it takes longer time.
This shows that when it comes to our work tasks, which are hopefully challenging for the brain, we actually lose a lot of time when we have several task at the same time.
No news, but drop the illusion
The studies on brain and multitasking have been going on for long and that multitasking doesn’t really works is probably no news for you. But still we tend to have job situations where we expect from both ourselves and from others to do things simultaneously. It’s very common that work structures are allowing the expectations of multitasking even though this is only slowing us down extremely.
Some things in our lives can be tricky not to multitask on, we might not even want to change that as it’s in our daily routines. But when we work we want it to be efficient and to the highest.
However I think it’s time we start facing the facts and drop the whole illusion of multitasking. What we instead can do is to accept that our brain does it’s best when focus on one task at the time. Nevertheless we can accomplish big, great things when we do focus our time properly.
It might be hard to only focus on one clients task at once as there is deadlines etc but we can structure our workload however we want. Everything is possible, especially if it’s for the better results.
Just focus
This is the exact reason why we believe so much in our Pop Up process of solving briefs in 48h to come up with an idea or concept.
Instead of taking on a clients brief and making a plan over a few weeks or even a few month ( don’t even dare to speak about years.. ) we have a planning of 48h for the project.
This might sound short, but because we focus the time flat out, it makes it possible and even better outcome.
We focus on that one and only task instead of sticking in with several daily emails, other briefs or meetings. We dedicate those two day only and only for the project.
It’s all about focus, we have a set schedule to focus on the different stages for a single brief, meaning our soul focus is on the one give brief. Our brains are nowhere else than on that brief.
Imagine the power of this! You can really go deep into the core of the present project and this counts for anything you really choose to focus on in life. The more you stare your eyes on one dot the more of that dot you will see and you will discover things you wouldn’t have noticed if you had several dots to stare at, at the same time.
People are unfortunately often forced into the neverending corner of multitasking with long time plannings. So there is often no way they can only focus on one thing at the time and when that is finished move on to the next. This is because their work model is built delivering multiple pieces of work at the same time.
We in The Pop Up Agency want to change exactly that. We have created an opportunity with our business model and time planning, to focus on one client project at a time and really give that project all our brain activity before we move on to the next.
With our Pop Up Academy we also share this model of work with other companies that are open to start running relay instead of madly try to jump in between the two sprint paths and still expect to reach the goal and win the race.
Focus is the key to not waste time and dare to stick to one task at the time and you will be a winner!
If you have any thoughts and opinions on this subject we love to hear about it. Or if you are interested in knowing more about how we work, we’re offering free 30-minute Google Hangout / Skype office hour sessions to talk about the 48h model we use. No strings attached. Get in touch if this is something for you.
/ Julia Schierbeck
Sources
Psychology Today
Forbes, Douglas Merrill
Brain Facts
American Psychological Association
Psychology Today
