The Myth About Multi-tasking
When someone says to me that they are a great multi-tasker
, I have a hard time not laughing in their face. Saying you are a great multi-tasker is a lot like saying you are a better driver when you're blindfolded with your hands tied behind your back. Let's break this statement down and see how irrational it is to say you are better at doing a number of things at once, than you are doing them one at a time. Sounds a little strange already, doesn't?
Definition
What the heck is multi-tasking? There is the good definition and then there is the bad definition. Let's look at the bad definition first. When someone says they are a great multi-tasker, what they are trying to convey is that they are good at running around and trying to do several things, all at the same time. For example, they try to convince themselves that while trying to answer the phone, they are dealing with a delivery driver who just arrived unannounced, while all along they have been giving instructions to two employees waiting to start their shift, interspersed with answering their cell phone. This is the standard accepted definition of multi-tasking.
The good definition of multi-tasking is spreading several tasks over a short period of time, breaking them up into short time slots, doing one, then moving on to the next, accomplishing several of them in a short period of time. Let's not confuse one with the other.
Let's look at the first example in more detail. This person, the expert multi tasker, is trying to do 4 separate activities all at the same time. Why? We all know that it's difficult most of the time to do one thing right, why would anyone want to try to do 4 things at the same time? The answer is simple: no one wants to try, and they just find themselves in the situation that they are forced to go down that path. No one wakes up in the morning and says, I think at 2:00 this afternoon, I'm going to allow myself to get so jammed up that I'm going to be forced to try to juggle 4 separate tasks in the air, all at the same time. Does this sound like a conversation you have had with yourself lately?
Finding yourself in a situation where you have to try to do 4 things all at the same time is a manifestation of previous failures. This person clearly didn't even try to properly organize their time that day, or if they did, failed miserably at it. Next, having two phones that could simultaneously interrupt you at the worst possible moment, and they did, is a mistake someone who has even a remote desire to control and drive there own agenda would never make. Allowing two employees to have to stand and wait for instructions before starting a shift is a cardinal error only some who has no interest in efficient productivity would ever make.
We all have to face reality, sooner or later. When you find yourself backed into a corner and you have run out of options and time, we all have to scramble to survive. Having said that, after repeated experiences of this kind of forced multi-tasking, you have to ask yourself, is there not a better way? The better way is not deluding yourself into thinking that you can accomplish more doing 4 things all at once, poorly, then doing each task separately, properly.
Let's review the good definition of multi-tasking. First of all, this example isn't really about multi-tasking, it's more about the logical way around being forced into multi-tasking. In our example, this person could have avoided themselves a great deal of grief if they had followed a few simple established guidelines that anyone following the PTS and PPM follow.
First, they allowed themselves to get off their agenda and allowed an unannounced driver to interrupt their day and dealt with him, on his terms and agenda. That is the bad mistake that really started the ball rolling downhill for our example.
Second, they had two telephone devices, a landline and cell phone, both on and both capable of interrupting our example at the worst time, which they both did. This is another easily avoidable mistake.
Third, having not one but two employees waiting on instructions to start a shift. There could not be a better way to destroy productivity than that.
One last cry in the dark about the myth of multi-tasking: Do you play tennis, ping-pong, golf? All of them involve driving or hitting one ball over a net, down the fairway. Not an easy task. Now try playing tennis with two balls, playing golf driving two balls all at the same time. Playing tennis with two balls makes as much sense as trying to do two separate tasks at the same time.
Copyright (c) 2009 Bryan Beckstead
by: Bryan Beckstead
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