Today, Linked-In offered an article, “The Magic of Doing One Thing at a Time”. The next time you aren’t doing three things at once, take a few moments to read it.
We make our own frenzy, and as managers, we can do the same for others. If we don’t care about productivity.
Humans in business have taken too seriously the metaphor of a computer. Modern computers can do several things at once, because essentially they have more than one brain. As humans, we have evolved a flawed mental model of working quicker by slicing tasks into ever smaller bits that can each be done in the every tinier moments of time between the slices of other tasks. Even in a computer this practice fails eventually.
Having run out of day-time hours, we are now encroaching on sleep time. The grand sin is keeping the smart phone at the bed-side, mentally ready to jump at any second. The insidious sin, recommended by many business gurus, is keeping paper at the bed-side for recording brilliant mid-night insights; this trains the already over-tasked brain to never really sleep. Don’t worry, you can sleep when you are dead.
Perhaps first we should try doing one thing at a time.
Excellent post -- and fabulous link! How easy it is to keep piling things on, without ever seeing the damage to our productivity. Juggling, in fact, becomes a badge of honour, rather than a sign of an inability to get the important things done first.
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