Be productive instead of being busy –
There is a new things out there right now, it’s long tail name is do just one thing at a time, versus that old Multi tasking thing. Now, I have a confession to make. I don’t actually ever multi task. I am more of a sequential tasker, if you want to get literal about it. I will get one thing going, and during the lag time, switch to another thing until the first task requires my attention once again.
I don’t have the physical or mental dexterity to do several things at once, other than to walk and chew gum. I have always been in awe of people who seemingly kept all the balls in the air when juggling several tasks. It turns out that maybe that was never a good idea in the first place.
You see, when you are doing several things at once, there is no way you can maintain your focus perfectly. Your mind will be anticipating the next thing you need to do, while you are completing your current task.
In fact, there was a great article in Forbes Magazine about this subject:
“But what if some people have a special gift for multitasking? The Stanford researchers compared groups of people based on their tendency to multitask and their belief that it helps their performance. They found that heavy multitaskers—those who multitask a lot and feel that it boosts their performance—were actually worse at multitasking than those who like to do a single thing at a time. The frequent multitaskers performed worse because they had more trouble organizing their thoughts and filtering out irrelevant information, and they were slower at switching from one task to another. Ouch.
Multitasking reduces your efficiency and performance because your brain can only focus on one thing at a time. When you try to do two things at once, your brain lacks the capacity to perform both tasks successfully.”
So, when people try to get you to focus on their problem whilst you are already in the midst of working on something else. Stop what you are doing, listen to what they need, then let them know that as soon as you complete the task at hand you will give their task your undivided attention.
Central Comm
