Multi-Tasking is a Vanity Exercise

Stop pretending you can do 3 jobs at the same time

We are told that men cannot multi-task but women can. Nonsense. Neither of them can. To think you can is naive and you are just storing up a world of pain and inefficiency. Let me make my case for the non-believers…

Studies show it can take between 15–30 minutes to get truly focused on a task, depending on the nature of the task. That’s what you are wasting each time you attempt to multi-task. No one is actually able to work on two jobs at the same time, what you are actually doing is ‘switching’ between tasks.

Task switching leads to indecision, it leads to mistakes and it definitely leads to wasted time. Still don’t believe me, let me explain.

Mistakes Can Happen

If you don’t give yourself the headspace to focus on a new task, this is when mistakes happen. If you try and multi-task, particularly on jobs that require good attention to detail (like data or coding) then you will make mistakes. You don’t give yourself the best chance to complete the task correctly.

Let me explain with a story about a business owner I was mentoring a couple of years ago. He came to be one day complaining about his team not taking responsibility and having to get involved in too many things and as a result, he had made a couple of high profile mistakes. He missed a critical bug in a new release and he sent an email incorrectly to a client.

My instinct was that he needed to get better at delegating, but when I visited their offices, it was pretty clear what the issue was.

He was a classic multi-tasker.

The things he was involved in were right, but rather than having a discipline about different tasks, I noticed he would be reviewing code whilst writing emails and taking calls.

I gave him a series of techniques for pulling himself away from this habit and 6 months later, no mistakes and a more efficient owner — all the while not having to do less work. In fact, I’d bet he was getting more work done.

It Actually Takes Longer Than You Think

I have a long-standing joke with my business partner that every time he quotes a time at me, I know it will be two to three times longer to complete. He is a serial multi-tasker. He runs multiple businesses, is a dedicated father and has more comics than is healthy for a grown man.

As a result of his packed life, for years he had tried to manage too many things at once. It’s given him the illusion of getting things done quicker, but when I force him to look at things in the cold light of day, the reality is it takes longer to complete than he thinks.

It is because you don’t finish jobs when you task switch. You satisfy an initial itch, but you still need to go back and complete it. If you add up the time wasted on getting going again, each individual task actually takes longer than you think it took.

You are really just fooling your own mind, which helps no one.

But I Have a Lot of Work to Complete

We all have a lot of work to do, you are not special. The average person has more tasks to complete than is realistic to achieve. That is not an excuse for task switching. It’s opposite if you think about the logic. If people are less efficient when you keep starting new jobs and they make more mistakes, then the logical approach is to avoid distraction, complete tasks and efficiently move to the next one.

I appreciate that is easier said than done and we don’t live in a perfect world where you can do this 100% of the time (I’m a homeschooling Dad, trust me when I say I understand how people get distracted) but there are tricks and strategies to employ that will make it easier and ultimately make you more efficient.

1. Turn off your email — email is a classic multi-tasker smokescreen. An alert pops up, you quickly check the message and suddenly you are engaged in another task, replying to an email or thinking about how you need to sort a problem later. All of that has taken you out of the moment on whatever task you were doing. Simply turn off your email for periods of the day, if someone needs to get hold of you that urgently, they will call you.
2. Social media notifications — typically on your phone, but however you receive notifications about social media, think about turning them off, at least during certain points in the day. I find I’m way more efficient if I dedicate time slots to different channels. I cannot ignore them, I have an audience on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook that is the lifeblood of my business. So I give them dedicated time where I go through all my messages, check out my timeline, look through the groups.
3. Plan, plan and plan — it’s obvious but it is still a fact. The better organised you are with your work, the fewer distractions you get and the less you need to switch between tasks. It’s not just having a plan, but sticking to it. Discipline and focus are just as important. Give yourself timeslots for different activities and don’t be tempted to quickly check on those other activities, stay focused on the one you have planned.
4. An ideas list — for some, the reason they get distracted and switch to something else is because of how their mind works. Ideas are constantly floating around, and whilst doing one task another idea might appear. You shouldn’t ever miss out on a great idea, so just keep an ideas list. Something pops into your head, write it down and don’t think about it again until a more appropriate time.
5. Prioritise — another classic, for a reason. One of the biggest reasons that people switch tasks is because they don’t prioritise the important job first. If the job you are doing is critical, then don’t get distracted by something else that comes up. If the other thing is more important, maybe you should have focused on that first. Emergencies happen, but that’s not an excuse for constantly switching tasks. They should be the exception and with good prioritisation, you have the capacity to allow for emergencies.

Still Don’t Believe Me?

So please, I implore everyone to stop multi-tasking, to stop task switching and to START getting organised, focused and finally being as efficient as you can.

If you still need convincing, just look at this simple example.

• It takes 30 minutes to do task A. It takes 30 minutes to do task B
• Our multi-tasker does 20 mins on task A and then looks quickly at task B — one minute lost
• They spend 10 mins on task B and then goes back to complete task A — four minutes lost switching and refocusing
• Having completed task A, they move back to task B — another 3 minutes lost
• So 2 jobs that should take one hour, have taken 8 minutes longer. Now multiple that up for 20 tasks and 5 days in a week.

That is overly simplistic to make the point. Often you are switching between more tasks and will lose even more time and make mistakes.

Multi-tasking is costing you time and money, so stop it now.