People say that multitasking is impossible to do. The human mind simply cannot process more than one thing at a time. As soon as you change gears from reading, to checking e-mail, to answering a phone call etc. you are wasting valuable time switching from one gear to another.
Interestingly enough good organisations and highly productive people take the opposite approach.
Bad organisations often limit the number of projects a manager has responsibility for to around 7. This ensures that managers can oversee their projects adequately and get the results they have been hired to get.
Similarly, people who are not highly productive limit the amount of work they do.
They have to have set times for study, to work, to answer e-mails and so on. If they can’t sit down and dedicate a large chunk of time to something, then they may as well have not shown up.
Good organisations (a rare breed) often do the very opposite. They often give their managers a minimum of seven or so projects.
Highly productive people also have a similar approach to life. They are often doing many things all at the same time. They hit the gym, are physically active, read a lot, socialise a lot, are starting a business which in itself has hundreds of tasks and obstacles to overcome….
So what gives. How do highly productive people get away with doing so many things at the same time?
This is the key:
Excellent people, like excellent organisations have an ability to hone in with killer precision on what needs to be done and then figure out the most time efficient way of doing it.
Seems very obvious, but it’s incredibly hard to do. However, if you’re incapable of doing the above and it generally takes you a long time to get to grips with new subjects/things then you’ll never get ahead of the competition.
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