Time Management Expert, Event Speaker: Mark Lamendola
 

Time Tips: Multi-tasking Tip #3

Why will the subject of multi-tasking not die? This is an example of the delusional thinking mentioned earlier. With today's standard brain inputs being relatively short, multi-tasking can appear to work.

Yes, it's true that our days are more fragmented. We get interruptions from telephones, for example. But it's not true that our processing abilities have suddenly switched from serial to parallel. And therein lies the poison pill of the myth of multitasking.

People confuse activity with results. So what if you are sending a text message to one person while talking on the phone to another person? What did your text message really say--anything useful? How deep and beneficial is that conversation?

Then there's a hugely obvious example: The person who is yakking on a cell phone while oblivious to the traffic around him or her. Yes, you can talk and drive at the same time. But you cannot do both activities well at the same time. Both will try to access certain parts of the brain at the same time, and the brain will simply put one request in queue. This is why, for example, you can drive down the interstate during low traffic hours and not have any problem on the phone; but why trying to chat while driving in intense traffic always results in one-finger salutes and blaring horns (and sometimes in collisions).

If you are multitasking, you have given short shrift to the reverence principle. You are assuming you can violate the rules that result from the construction of your own body. This is a recipe for failure.

A more productive approach is to evaluate which things need to be done first. Do those first, and do those well.

Does multitasking ever work under any circumstances? Yes. And that is part of the problem. People extrapolate from one success the idea that the same technique will always succeed. When you have two activities that don't compete for the same areas of the brain, multitasking works. This is why you can file papers away or dust your bookshelves while talking on the phone. But filing papers and dusting are far simpler tasks than driving a car.

 

 
A great way many businesses are managing time is using software. There are many forms of time and attendance software which allows managers to track and monitor employees time usage.
 

More thoughts on time management

The phrase "time management" is an unfortunate language quirk. You can't really manage time. It just is. You can't gain time, create time, or even lose time. Time is what it is, regardless of what we do.

It would be better to say "time allocation" or "activity management" "time usage" or some other phraseology to indicate that it's not time itself you're managing but how you use the time that exists. But we'll use the common terminology here to avoid confusion.

Some things time management is not:

  • Being more efficient. Suppose you become very efficient at making buggy whips. Does this fact mean you are managing your time well?
  • Getting more done in a given amount of time. Getting more done of what? And to what degree of quality? If you rake the leaves on a lawn from one side to the other all day long, does that mean you are a good time manager?
  • Being able to juggle multiple priorities. Instead of juggling priorities, assign priorities. First tend to the urgent things, then the most important things.
  • Mastering multi-tasking. This concept conflicts with what we know about the human brain. If you buy into this self-defeating, time-wasting, quality-killing ideology, you might also be interested in practicing solo flight by flapping your arms frantically.
  • Working faster. No, this mode is how you make mistakes that you subsequently have to spend more time fixing.

Some things good time management involves:

  • Deciding what to do. This is trickier than it sounds. Which is why there are time management experts.
  • Deciding what not to do. This is even trickier than deciding what to do. Which is why there are time managers and why discipline is a huge, huge factor in accomplishing this.
  • Deciding what to do when, and in what order. In essence, prioritization.
  • Determining the scope, goals, and metrics for each activity you undertake. In this area, we the find most room for improvement. Precision here allows you to avoid waste on the one hand, and falling short on the other.
  • Planning out the work, task, project, or activity such that you determine the necessary steps to quality completion. That is, what must you do to meet the intended goal and quality metrics?
  • Identifying unnecessary steps. Get this right, and you can cut your wasted hours significantly.
  • Figuring out what resources to use. Not all resources applicable to a task are equal. Picking the right tool for the job saves time, improves quality, and makes life less stressful.

We've highlighted only some of the factors involved in good time management. We actually teach extreme time management, which is a methodology that allows you to make effective use of your time almost second nature. You don't need a complicated system. Our system puts many of the variables on autopilot, so you have more time to do what you need to do. Our system goes way beyond most other systems in results, yet is far simpler.

Contact us for a presentation to your organization: comments @ mindconnection.com (remove the spaces after pasting into your e-mail client's "to" box.