Ever overheard someone bragging about how great they are at multitasking? Somehow, in the United States, the act of managing a zillion disparate projects at once has been elevated and equated with real professional skill. And yet, you’ll find that the further up the business ladder people go, the less they multitask. Multitaskers tend to multitask at the bequest of those who manage them. And somehow, they get pride from it.
Study after scientific study have shown that people perform far worse when their attention is divided than when it is focused. Studies have shown that people do a poor job of managing multiple projects at once, and they’ve even shown that, overall, tasks take longer to complete when they’re tackled all at once versus one at a time.
Simply put, your brain just doesn’t do it that well. So why all the bragging about multitasking?
We lump this into the same category as all that “busy is good” talk. We all get into this habit of finding value and security in being overloaded, we communicate this to our peers and bosses in order to validate the work that we do, and we lose sight of what really matters most: efficiency, quality, execution.
What does any manager really expect from his or her people? Is it really more than just productivity? Aren’t mistakes and errors unproductive? Don’t we invest less creative energy in a project when we’re trying to get a million other things done at the same time? Don’t we devalue the importance of our work when we’re totally stressed out trying to do it?
Great work comes from happy, relaxed, focused people. Multitasking has never applied to setting strategic objectives, solving critical problems, or doing anything creative. If an executive tried to multitask these tasks, the outcomes would be so poor that they would likely not have an opportunity to try them again. The only things anyone has ever multitasked are either non-critical or easily delegated. If you’re feeling overwhelmed with details, look beyond yourself: who can you delegate those tasks to so you can apply your valuable creative energy to more pressing business issues?
It’s easy to get sucked into being busy, multitasking, and a slew of other business “values” that have nothing to do with results. Staying focused on your productivity and the quality of your work demands true perspective and the guts to ‘just say no’!
Question: How do you stay focused on results instead of tasks?
