How to Set Yourself Up for Success

Lin Fisher
Vice-President of Marketing and Play Operations
Baker Communications, Inc.
June, 2011

What are you thinking about as you begin to read this piece on how and why to reduce the time you spend multi-tasking?

How long will this take?
Is this really worth my time?
Is there a list of bullet points I can scan instead of reading the whole thing?
How much is being added to my to-do list right this minute, while I‘m doing this?
Is there anything else I could be doing while I‘m reading?

If you are asking yourself these kinds of questions, especially the last one, you are a prime candidate for a "multi-tasking make-over." That‘s because the activity that you spend so much time trying to get better at-- multi-tasking-- is the very one that‘s interfering with your productivity.

A major clue to the problem of multi-tasking can be found in the definition: doing more than one, and usually several, jobs at one time, without giving adequate or appropriate attention to any of them. In other words, the symptom is the disease. With too much to do, we behave as if none of the tasks is worth a good, honest effort, much less our best. And we reap what we sow.

Why do police beg us not to talk on our cell phones, and not to send or receive text messages, while driving? Are they just trying to crimp our productivity? No, they are trying to save lives and to prevent car wrecks, which statistics show increase when drivers are distracted. That‘s why more and more cities have passed laws forbidding cell phone use in school zones.

Everyone has 24 hours to use every day to accomplish a variety of tasks. No one gets more, no one gets fewer. This also means that no one has the ability actually to stretch the space time continuum in order to do more than one thing at the same time. People who juggle texting and emails and searching the Internet for information for an important project that is open on their computer while conducting a phone conversation via headset, are not getting more done or turning out a superior project. They are almost certainly overlooking important issues or ideas, making careless errors and frying their brains from the stress of trying to push so much input through their brains at the same time. At the end of the day, they will be drained from the pace and frustrated because they probably didn‘t complete a single one of their most important tasks.

Much of the time, multi-tasking is just "activity avoidance." We shut ourselves off from the responsibilities we prefer not to tackle, and instead fill the time with "busy-ness." You could search far and wide for a better way to reduce your productivity, and would not find one. As author Dave Crenshaw says, "Doing it all gets nothing done."

To get the increased productivity you are after, you need to reduce the time you spend multi-tasking. The pay-off for less scattered, and more focused, endeavors is:

accomplishing more that truly matters in less time
improving your overall effectiveness
enriching your relationships

Are you Ready for a Multi-taking Make-over?
Just as people work out, diet, and relax more at a spa or retreat center in order to look and feel better, there are some simple, practical changes you can implement to "make-over" your multi-tasking, rapid-fire work habits.

There are at least six benefits to reducing our multi-tasking and replacing it with more focused, deliberate activities, including:

Spending more quality time with other people
Making real progress on our tasks and responsibilities
Reducing our stress levels
Spending less times doing things that don‘t matter
Devoting more time and energy to things that make a difference
Realizing there is no down-side to reducing multi-tasking

Sounds wonderful, and it is. Even better, these changes are not only possible, but also accessible to anyone who is willing to make some practical changes. All you have to do is:

Change your focus. Spend more time thinking about why you do things before you think about how you will do them.
Plan your workday so you can avoid as many interruptions as possible. Let your colleagues know when you are available and when you are not
Turn off your cell phone for designated periods of time. Yes, you read that‘s right. When you stop to think about it, always being accessible by telephone and answering all calls on the first ring is a fairly new practice in our culture. You may think you have to be available 24-7-365, and unless you turn off from time to time, you always will be, and your productivity will probably flat-line about where it is now.
Turn off your cell phone during your drive, or ride, in to work. Use that time for deeper thinking.
To increase efficiencies, group related and similar tasks into clusters before scheduling a meeting to discuss them, or before you work on them yourself. Consider it a form of "batch processing."

It won‘t be long before you find yourself increasingly losing patience with those things that take away your focus. You will still have plenty of tasks, but a higher percentage of them will be important, and your use of the prefix "multi" will decrease significantly.

Another challenge you can give yourself is to schedule 50% less time than you normally would to accomplish a project or a goal. With less multi-tasking and more focused time, you will find that not only your productivity, but also your self-satisfaction increasing. And any time you can swap stress for fulfillment, that‘s too good a deal to pass up.

By curbing or stopping multi-tasking, you will become a different you, a more centered, more focused you. When you look in the mirror, that person you will see is someone who is truly made-over.

Walter Rogers is the President and CEO of Baker Communications. Baker Communications is a sales training and development company specializing in helping client companies increase their sales and management effectiveness. He can be reached at 713-627-7700.

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