Think Multi-tasking Makes You More Productive? Think Again!
Sound familiar? This is the way a lot of entrepreneurs work. What we don't realize is that we are wasting a huge amount of time doing so. See, there's a "switching cost" every time we change tasks. Productivity experts say that it can take as much as four minutes to get back to full productivity on a long task after an interruption.
About.com Management Guide F. John Reh explains how the practice of "chunking" can boost your productivity. Try it for a week and see for yourself.
While the practice of chunking is usually considered on an hourly/daily basis, there's a related concept that can be applied on a larger scale. Think about all the big projects you have. Do you think it makes more sense to work on them all in parallel, or to complete one, then the next, then the next?
Let's say you have five client projects that will each take one full day of effort. Whether you work on each of them a little bit every day, or on just one each day and complete it, it will still take a week to complete them all. But in the first scenario, all five clients have to wait until the end of the week. In the second one, the first client gets their work after one day, the second at the end of day two, and so on. Which do you think makes happier clients?
Or what if they're your own projects -- marketing, product development, etc.? Instead of working on them in parallel -- multi-tasking at a macro level -- if you devote yourself fully to one project until it's complete, you can start reaping the rewards of the completed project -- additional marketing, a new product to sell, etc.
Of course, it's not always possible to avoid working in parallel to some extent. Sometimes you have to wait on other people. But many times that task-switching is self-imposed and arbitrary. By becoming aware of how it drains your productivity, you can change those habits and start seeing faster returns from your efforts.
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Comments
Scott,
I read your multi-tasking item with interest. I have used the chunking principle in many of my careers and definitely agree that it works.
I agree whole-heartedly that lots of multi-tasking is not the most efficient use of time, but many entrepreneurs are one-man shows. Can you really afford to prioritize a report over taking a customer call? In my business it is me doing the accounting and me doing the advertising, also me taking customer bookings (= sales = revenue). I can chunk accounting vs. advertising. I can chunk maintenance activities vs. filing. But interruptions, especially customer phone calls, are often unavoidable and the focus on the report has to suffer or I’d be out of revenue and therefore out of business! I wish I could find a better way, but so far no dice!
Scott, as a mother of 5 and a multi-million dollar business owner - I giggle when peole say they are multi-tasking. I love your chunking concept - I learned from my mentors the gift of setting up a golden hour each day - highlight inportant revenue producing tasks - and let noothing get between me and my golden hour - It is sacred! chris@marketoutloud.com
There’s a really funny video on YouTube that illustrates the fact that the brain is not wired to multi-task.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=xO_oEGHWSMU
This video is an illustration of a set of “rules” for the brain written up in a book called “Brain Rules” by Dr. John Medina. He’s a pretting interesting guy and his “rules” for the brain really make sense.
Oh boy do I love this! Every single one of my entrepreneur clients lies awake at night thinking about their unfinished To Do list. (In fact, it’s one of the big reasons they sign on with a Duct Tape Marketing coach – to find out how to use their precious time to generate more high-profit revenue.) One technique that our clients find useful is this: look at your client list, and rank them by revenue and profitability. A lot of times you’ll find that very few clients generate a whole bunch of money for your firm…and eureka! that’s where you should focus. One president of a manufacturing firm we work with discovered that 10 out of his 899 customers accounted for 30% of his business, but 90% of his time was taken up by the other 889 low-paying customers. Now he says, “I have 2 jobs. One: keep those 10 companies happy; two: find more companies like them. Anything that takes my eye off that ball I either delegate or ignore.”
Liz Walker
www.ducttapemarketingcoach.ca
In fact I am a “productivity expert” and I can tell you that multi-tasking is even worse than outlined here. While there have been many studies on the effects of multitasking on individual productivity, the real damage is the snow ball effect it has on organizations, or across people who count on one another to get work done. In short, the biggest reason we have to multitask is because others multitask. We all have the challenge that we can’t complete most of the items on our to-do list because we are waiting on inputs from others. Take your example of chunking time for five projects over a week. If you could be done on Monday, and I expect you to be done on Wednesday, but you are not done until Friday, now you’ve killed my schedule as well as yours. Multitasking not only delays the completion of tasks, it makes predicting when tasks will be complete nearly impossible and destroys the synchronization of hand-offs, thus launching those around us into more multitasking and and causing a vicious cycle. Of course in small companies most of those we depend on do not work for us and we can’t set their priorities. But we can improve the situation for us and those that depend on us by setting priorities and clearly defining hand-offs (what-when-who) and using the chunking technique. My suggestion to entrepreneurs is not prioritize by not delaying anything that could hold up an invoice. Even if priorities are set at random, just setting them to minimize multitasking is half the battle. Once you have better control over your schedule you’ll find you can influence others priorities as well.
This has been a huge struggle for me. I already have an issue with thinking about too many things at once, but when the phone rings or the email pops up, I get twice as distracted.
I have had to disregard emails notifications and silent the phone to get work done.
Putting together a time management system has really helped, and I suggest everyone do it and stick to it.
Nate Stockard
The Market Seedling
I always fall into this trap, and as much as I like to think I eventually get everything done, I realize that night just before dozing off to sleep, the ten things I did forget through the day. Insomnia quickly follows!