Lessons for a father - Multitasking Is A Myth

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There always seems to be a very human need to better ourselves. Sometimes this need manifests itself with our attempt to do multiple things at the same time. What we are doing, however, when we are multi-tasking is really just creating a perception of doing multiple things at the same time.

Human beings, that's us, are really like single core microprocessors. Under the guise of doing multiple things at the same time, what we are really doing is doing one thing for part of the time before we move to the next thing and then doing that for a little while. There is no multi-tasking. There is just time sharing and task shifting.

Consider this: in a normal day, we would have meetings, talk to people, send emails, all while doing our job. Being the multi-taskers that we all try to be, some of these tasks might overlap. In other words, we might attend a meeting while checking and replying to emails or excusing ourselves and attending phone calls. 

One way of looking at the situation is we accomplished 3 things in the same time period (over achiever anyone?). Another way of looking at it is we involved ourselves with 3 things and did not pay enough attention to any one of the 3. What is better then? Doing 3 things at the same time and not paying enough attention to detail or just 1 and being completely present?

It is not that easy to concentrate on 1 thing at a time either. Just the other day, I attended a phone call from work while taking care of our son. I had to do the best I could given the situation. Rest assured, I could not do a very good job of either, but lack of quality in both tasks was acceptable.

In situations that can be better managed though, here is what I do:

• Work on increasing our focus: According to various studies a walk of 5 - 10 minutes in a day, for example, has the capacity to do wonders to our attentiveness. I utilize these walks for one on one meetings sometimes.
• Decline meeting requests: We have been there. Our calendars get "double booked" and we try and attend both and pay attention to neither. 
• Prioritize and then commit: Prioritization of tasks would help us get a better handle on things. 

The idea is to not pretend to be something we are not. All of us work on one thing at a time. Simplifying how we live and work can go a long way in making sure we are not just doing our job but adding true value.