Multiply Your Productivity By Becoming Laser Focused
By: Glen Hopkins
To multitask or not to multitask? Find out if you're more productive when you do one thing at a time.
Experts who utilize the power of focus effortlessly attract very targeted customers to themselves and their businesses.
A Case of Overload
Do you feel a sense of overwhelm every time you open up your e-mail client and see all those e-mail messages waiting for your response? Every day, there are more and more and more! All just waiting for you to take some sort of action! If you answered yes, you're not alone. Heck, we live in the information age and we work Online. Everyone, including you and me, wants everything immediately.
Do you feel stressed about it? Maybe even overwhelmed? I'm guessing that you have felt this way at least a few times--if not on a daily basis.
Multitasking Madness
More often than not, most people attempt to tackle several of their daily tasks all at once. Doing a little bit of project A, then a little bit of project B, then a little of project C and so on. Then by the end of the day, week, month or even year, they have done a little of everything but have not completed any one task in full.
As a result, nothing substantial gets accomplished, which often means no profit-generating projects were completed either!
The ability to multitask is NOT an asset. It is NOT something you want your employees to effectively do, nor is it something you want to do. Listen up... if you are multi-tasking you are wasting your time and it's eating up your profits!
The Secret to Working Less and Earning More
Work less and earn more. Yeah right. You hear that all the time but nobody ever actually shows you how it's done. Well, get ready, because I'm about to. And when you see how simple it is, you might just kick yourself!
The secret to working less and earning more is focus. With concentrated focus you'll get a great deal more accomplished in a much shorter period of time. What's the quickest way from point A to point B? A straight line, right? It's not rocket science.
So STOP multitasking. Multitasking just means meandering aimlessly without focus. Doing so gets you nowhere fast.
Charting Progress
Don't believe me? Take a look at the chart above and follow along. In the example, you'll see there are three projects at hand. Project A, Project B, and Project C.
In BOTH scenarios, each of the three projects requires a total of three weeks of time for completion.
In the first scenario, titled "Focus Equals Productivity," each of the three projects are tackled one at a time with a focused effort. As a result, Project A is completed in 3 weeks and in theory should start making you some money.
Now, while the cash flow from project A is coming in, you start project B and work on it for three weeks until completion. Now, after six weeks, you have two projects completed and cash flow coming in from both. So you start project C and complete it in three weeks.
In this scenario, all three projects were completed in full in just nine weeks. Furthermore, you began to see the results after just three weeks from project A and then after six and nine weeks for project B and C respectively.
Now let's look at the second and, unfortunately, all-too-common scenario titled, "The Multitasking Myth". In this scenario, you begin by working on project A for one week, then you move onto project B for one week, then you do a little of project C for one week.
Therefore, at the end of three weeks of "multitasking" you have done a little of each project but you have not completed any. Therefore, nothing is complete and you have no new cash flow. So you repeat this process spending one week on each project again.
Now six weeks have passed and still, none of the projects are complete, and you still have no new cash flow. So you continue on with each of the projects, spending one week at a time on each until all three projects are finally complete.
The Real Score
As you can see, when multitasking, it takes an entire seven weeks before just one task is completed and has the potential of earning you money. To get all three projects completed takes you twenty-one weeks. That's four weeks of lost productivity on EACH project!
But wait, it gets worse. Do you really think you can go nine entire weeks without a great new idea coming your way? Seriously, we all come up with brilliant new ideas and projects all the time that threaten to take us off course. The result? Half-finished projects get pushed to the "back burner" and never actually get completed. Before you know it, the entire year has gone by and you've accomplished very little.
TIP: Turn off your email! Email is the biggest time killer there is. Every time you look at your email you'll get side-tracked from the task at hand.
Stay focused and only check your email during set times each day. I review and respond to email for one hour each morning then I turn it off and get on with my ONE project. Then, at noon or after lunch, I'll check my email for responses to any communication that was opened in the morning. After that, I turn it off for the rest of the day and, if I get a chance, I'll take one more quick look in the late afternoon.
Anything more than that is too much. If you need more time than that, I recommend you consider hiring some support staff to help you take care of support issues, set up meetings for you, and review joint venture proposals.
If you liked this article and want to learn more, you can get a copy of Glen's 3-Day workshop for free!
Comments
I agree that multitasking does waste time, but mostly because it takes time for our minds to refocus on a job each time we are distracted from it. It also makes sense to finish one project at a time when each project independently brings in revenue. However, it appears there is a flaw in the example above when calculating the time it would take to finish the three projects when multitasking (one week on each project before returning on the first one). When talking about only those projects, it would still take nine weeks to finish all three. Project A would be worked on in weeks 1, 4, and 7; Project B would be worked on in weeks 2, 5, and 8; and Project C would be worked on in weeks 3, 6, and 9.
Absolute truth ~ and probably the reason my home business floundered so in its early stages. This is something that we all know (in our hearts) but push to the side as we do "crisis management" every day! I will be linking and referring to this article in my next home business newsletter...
Thank you!
Hmmm, you been looking through my office window again. Damn, you are so right, would love to stay and chat but i need to get back to the task at hand, after i close outlook that is.
It's certainly true that multitasking can result in flitting between a zillion tasks and never getting anything finished. But sometimes multitasking can't be avoided. Firstly there's all the domestic details: someone has to cook lunch, supervise homework, buy a reel of green thread etc. etc. etc. etc. Sure you need to block out time without any petty distractions, but it has to go in somewhere, and a break from the computer is a great time to load the washing machine. Secondly any kind of memorising (like irregular German verbs) is best done little and often.
I suppose it's a question of horses for courses.
The Multi-Tasking Myth is somewhat misleading, because making the 3 projects really doesn't require 7 weeks each. It just overlapped. As an engineer, we learned motion study and we know that multi-tasking is a much more efficient way to finish things because trying to stay focused on a subject can cause brain-lagging and therefore result to inefficiency. We try to chop them up into small portions so they won't look like a much heavy load for us. And thus enabling us to have more determination to accomplish more things. Through multi-tasking, we feel encouraged because we know we are accomplishing parts of the jobs symbolizing progress for each. In the end, it's still the same: take 9 weeks and same, all finished.
I think that some tasks lend themselves more to multi-tasking and other tasks require extended periods of concentration. To me, it's more important to identify tasks which require your uninterrupted focus and eliminate the usual distractors (reading email, answering the phone instead of letting callers leave a message) and block out chunks of time for them. I also agree with Camille's post that chopping up larger tasks into manageable units takes away the "overwhelm" factor that can be daunting--and then we postpone tackling larger tasks because we can't find time to solely devote to them. Another thought: when I'm in the middle of one of those larger tasks and get "stuck," I often find that doing something completely different breaks the stuck pattern and opens my mind for inspirational solutions that seem to come out of nowhere.
However, I also agree with Glen's concept, because if you constantly multi-task everything, you lose sight of the larger picture.
Life is a balancing act. And it's not always going to be optimally balanced. Only you can determine where you stand in the bigger picture of your life.
i don't think that theory works for everybody, i multitask a lot and it helps me achieve multiple goals faster, it also affords me the opportunity to do something different when the monotony of a task is getting to me. i think it's a case of different strokes for different folks.
It's interesting to see the different responses from people.
Especially, how some people are trying to justify one approach over the other. At the end of the day, if you believe you're right and the other is wrong, then you're going to continue to stick with what you're already doing. Without actually making any effort to stay focussed, and stick to long tasks, people don't know the difference it might make, or not. Often, if someone is flitting between tasks, it's usually because they can't stay focussed. I know, I have that challenge at times myself. But equally, once you find your flow, and your in the middle of doing something, you often don't want to stop working, so that you can just get it done. I think achieving that flow state, is the greatest challenge people face, and once mastered, would provide a real difference between multi-tasked workers, and workers who work in flow..
That's my 2 cents.. worth..
Actually the best approach is a bit of a hybrid and was outlined many years ago by a consultant to Bethlehem steel company: List the 6 or 7 most important tasks (a task is a work item that can theoretically be completed in 1 day) that you absolutely MUST do today. Prioritize those things from most important to least. Now, do those things in that order. If, for some reason, a task cannot be completed, move on to the next. When you can, go back to the more important task and complete it. There is simply no other way to get more done in a day that by using this method. -David T. McKee,
I use to be able to multitask easily in my 20's & 30's and somewhat in my 40's, but now, in my 50's I find I get overwhelmed and lose focus then give up because it all just seems too impossible. But, sometimes you start burning out if you don't step back for a quick break from one task and switch to another. You need to know your own body, mentally and physically, and remember that what once worked may not work for every task, or every time of your life. Great article, thanks!