Just Take Your Time

Posted under Productivity

Link: Just Take Your Time.

Ah, “multitasking”-the golden buzzword with almost mandatory inclusion in resumes and job descriptions alike. While it conjures visions of well-organized individuals juggling a multitude of responsibilities with ease, is it really all it’s cracked up to be? Recent studies show that this once-touted ability may actually be detrimental to efficiency.

To find out for sure, we asked productivity specialist Mark Ellwood, founder of Pace Productivity Inc. in Toronto, to convince a chronic multitasker he could actually be more focused and effective by doing (gasp!) one thing at a time…

How many of us try to do more than one thing at the same time and end up doing nothing particularly well? For instance, I’ve gone through spurts where I’ll be trying to answer questions on the phone, while reading email and watching a CD install on another monitor… What this leads to is often an annoyed listener, a half-read email and a program installed to the wrong directory. :o

This is a good reminder it’s better to do one thing in it’s own time completely than 3 things sloppily or half-way. Imagine the stress we’d avoid if we took this advice.