Multitasking Leads to Multi-problems

By James A. Baker
Author, The Anger Busting Workbook,
Finalist, Book of the Year, Foreword Magazine
Founder and CEO,
Baker Communications

"For 10 years researchers studied the behavior of busy managers in nearly a dozen large companies. Their findings on managerial behavior showed that fully 90% of managers squander their time in all sorts of ineffective activities. In other words, a mere 10% of managers spend their time in a committed, purposeful, and reflective manner." Dr. Helke Bruch and Dr. Sumantra Ghoshal, Harvard Business Review, 2/2002

Take a moment to study the quote above. What does it tell you about the biggest challenge each of us faces in the struggle to manage our time and achieve our most important goals? Simply put, it boils down to this:

The main reason we run out of time is because we waste it!

It is true that we all face challenges that have the potential to divert time, energy and other resources away from our pursuit of our most important goals, but it is rarely simply an issue of running out of time. Instead, the real problem is that we allow too many interruptions and distractions to hijack our valuable time, leaving us with less time to devote to the things that are truly important. I can give you plenty of great tips and suggestions for dealing with these problems– sometimes called time bandits or time vampires – but there is one thing I can’t help you with: your attitude.

Time is the ONLY resource that is distributed to everyone in equal measure. Everyone in the whole world has the exact same 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year to work with. No matter what your race, color, creed, economic status or pay grade at work, your have just the same time status as everyone else. So, when it comes to time management, in the final analysis, it is your decisions, not your circumstances, that will determine how successfully you manage your time in order to achieve your most valuable goals.

One of the best places to start reigning in the issues that you waste time one is to dump the myth of multitasking. Here is some interesting research that speaks to this dumb idea.

A 2005 study by Basex, a New York research firm, found that office distractions ate up 2.1 hours a day for the average worker. That adds up to $28 billion a year in the United States alone. Another study found that employees devoted an average of 11 minutes to a project before being distracted. Researchers at the University of California, Irvine, found that once interrupted, it takes workers 25 minutes to return to their original task, if they return at all. This is especially disturbing, considering their research also discovered that employees switch activities, such as making a call, speaking with someone in their cubicle or working on a document, every three minutes on average.

But here is the clincher: According to research published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, people who multitask are less efficient than those who focus on one project at a time. Researchers report that "Managing two mental tasks at once reduces the brainpower available for either task."

What conclusion can you draw from the above observations? How about, "Multitasking is a code word for wasting time!" Partially inspired by the rise in powerful new technologies, people have bought into the myth of multitasking to describe someone with the ability to switch rapidly between real and virtual work environments to create the illusion that they can manage several tasks almost simultaneously and generate an excellent work product in all areas. This is simply not true, as the research above appears to reinforce.

Remember, we have already emphasized that everyone has the identical 24 hours to use every day to accomplish a variety of tasks. This also means that no one has the ability actually to stretch the space time continuum in order to do more than one thing at the same time. People who juggle texting and emails and searching the Internet for information for an important project that is open on their computer while conducting a phone conversation via headset, are not getting more done or turning out a superior project. They are almost certainly overlooking important issues or ideas, making careless errors and frying their brains from the stress of trying to push so much input through their brains at the same time. At the end of the day, they will be drained from the pace and frustrated because they probably didn’t complete a single one of their most important tasks.

It is much more efficient and effective to plan your activities consecutively during the day, allowing sufficient time for each one so that you will be able to accomplish something significant before moving on to the next task. You will be more relaxed and the quality of your work product will be higher. Instead of multitasking:

? Schedule important tasks for the day consecutively in your planner

? Plan time to answer email and return calls, instead of trying to handle them in the middle of your important work

? Postpone non-essential requests that will distract you from finishing what you have scheduled for the block of time in which you are working at the moment.

? Don’t over schedule yourself. You will not get more done, you will only make more mistakes and overlook important details.

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June Time Management Quick Tip of the Month – It Helps to Care About What You Are Doing

Most of us would say we are very busy – too busy – all the time. Still, many of us end up scrambling through life like it was a basketball game with no baskets at either end of the court; we just run up and down throwing things into the air, with no way to measure from day to day whether we are winning or losing. All we know is that we expended a lot of energy doing things that someone told us needed to get done. Turn busyness into productivity by learning to set meaningful goals. A goal is a practical, definable, measurable, achievable outcome that you either want to or must accomplish. Goals break down into two basic categories: externally imposed (somebody else wants you to do it) and self-imposed (you do it because you personally care about it). The more you can convert your goals to self-imposed goals that you really care about, the more likely you are to get things done and feel good about it.