Are you Guilty of Multi-tasking, too?

Last week I listened to an interview from Melanie Benson Strick (www.successconnections.com) with Dave Crenshaw who wrote a book called “The Myth of Multitasking: How ‘Doing it All’ Gets Nothing Done” www.davecrenshaw.com and the facts he pointed out were quite shocking. I don’t know about you but even though I heard about being focused gets you more done, I wasn’t aware how true this is – and how much time you waste by multi-tasking.

Here are 3 facts that got me thinking:

• Task switching: when you switch from one task to another and then have to go back to your original one, for example, you are writing your ezine article and get interrupted by a phone call. You attend to the phone call, then check your emails before you return to your writing. To get back to the focus of writing your article takes you a lot of time. Add that up to a day, week or month.
• Focus: when you attend an online workshop, or listening to an interview over the phone or radio and check your emails and maybe think of your shopping list at the same time, you won’t be able to fully embrace the content of your audio – your attention span is so low that you can’t remember 95% or more of what you would have learned if you had given it full attention.
• Focus: In the interview, Crenshaw mentioned that an average person can only focus for 11 min on a task of project before she or he gets distracted. Pretty shocking eh? Think about it: do you bombard your VA with msn messages, emails or text messages to send over your tasks? And if you do, what are your expectations for the quality of her work? If you do this, then your VA is likely distracted 80% of her time and won’t be able to use her time effectively let alone deliver in a high quality manner.

I was quite astounded at all the facts he shared with us on the call and I decided to rethink my strategy of multi-tasking.

If you are working in a fast paced working environment you can’t just work on one project or task a day – but what you can do it work at one project or task at one time – without being interrupted. So what I’d recommend you do is clean your desk and focus on one task or project until it is completed or you cannot do anything else without somebody else’s input. Then you set the project or task aside and move to the next one (like piles on your desk ) – maybe you take a break in the middle of moving to another task or check your messages.

Here are the 3 things I have implemented into my business day that I’d like to share with you:

• I plan my day the evening before. Because not only multitasking can waste a lot of time, but also a lack of planning. I want to know what I am working on the next day, when I have my meetings and what I need to prepare for them. Crenshaw said that when you don’t plan out your day before you start your day, you are 10% less efficient during the day.
• Get things done before start the official workday. I usually start working on my clients projects after 9.30am. This gives me 1.5hrs in the morning (I usually start work at 8am) to be productive, to finish a project or task and cross it off my list right away. It feels great to be able to say to yourself that you have been productive in the morning, because….should you fall back into the multi-tasking habit or checking emails and surfing the internet in the afternoon (this could also be a nice break from high level brain work), you don’t feel so bad because you got stuff done in the morning.
• And as mentioned above, work on one project at a time, then take a break or at least clean my desk to make room for the new project – this is great as you really do get more done in the same amount of time AND the feeling of having completed something is very rewarding

Do it for just one day and see how it works. Do you notice a difference?

Are you guilty of multi-tasking too? What is your biggest challenge with getting things done while multi-tasking?

If you struggle with this I highly encourage you to check out Dave’s website www.davecrenshaw.com to find ways to minimize that. If you’d like to learn more about how you specifically can save some time and be more organized during the day, contact me for a strategy session to find ways to save you more time in the day.