Put One Thing at a Time!

On a con­trary to pop­u­lar belief, in our mod­ern day, the per­son that can per­form mul­ti­task­ing seemed to be the most pro­duc­tive per­son in office.  On a daily basis you’ve got to work on mul­ti­ple things at one go.  We are bom­barded from mul­ti­ple projects at one shot.  We get unplanned requests every day.  What’s worst, there are already fewer peo­ple in most orga­ni­za­tions than ever before, and most of us have more work heaped on us that before.  So you are pro­duc­tive.  Right?

And what’s more, busi­ness is not slow­ing down and the level of work prod­uct is not dimin­ish­ing (it can be even more demand­ing).  You’ve got more things to attend to.  You have more gad­gets to get you con­nected to the office.  Your mobile, Black­berry, email, instant mes­sag­ing and voice mail is our there to alert you.  How can any­one get any­thing done with all these factors?

It can be really dif­fi­cult to keep up with the pace of the busi­ness momen­tum – even so, work more quickly than the speed of busi­ness.  Pro­duc­tiv­ity is not just about get­ting through a task.  It’s about com­plet­ing the task to a min­i­mal level of qual­ity.  Rush­ing though a task gen­er­ally declared itself as a lower qual­ity work deliv­ered.  And what’s next?  It’s either the work will be thrown back to you or its going to be given to some unlucky folk in your com­pany to clean up the mess.

Our rec­om­men­da­tion — as much as pos­si­ble, focus on one thing at a time.   You know you the lengthy list of “to-do” list on your table.  And let’s face the fact; multi-tasking is not really pro­duc­tive for every­one in most orga­ni­za­tions.  Espe­cially when there is any qual­ity or thought put to it.  Our human brains are not designed to take two tasks at a time, not even the lat­est proces­sor in of our time.  The level of atten­tive­ness to qual­ity breaks down when we stack up with distractions.

Ok, we know it’s impos­si­ble to do only one thing every day.  You will be an over­head if you work this way.  How­ever, as much as pos­si­ble, focus on one task at a time or do as much of that task as you can.  Some tasks like respond­ing to an invi­ta­tion to ten­der or ana­lyz­ing finan­cial trends can take sev­eral days.  And more than often, you won’t be able to fin­ish in a day with 8 to 9 hours of time put into it.  You will go nuts!  But again, we rec­om­mend that you work on the task as long as possible.

How to do that with all the dis­trac­tions?  Turn off your mobile, close your “I’m avail­able” door, turn off the email noti­fi­ca­tion.  You will come under fire for those urgent tasks.  But it’s ok, they may not be as impor­tant.  Your prod­uct will improve, you’ll gen­er­ate bet­ter qual­ity work, and you’ll get your stuff done more effec­tively and efficiently.

Yes, it also seemed like the cur­rent image of a cor­po­rate elite is one who walks around with 5 to 6 dif­fer­ent active projects, talks con­stantly on his mobile (to who­ever), run­ning to meet his daily sched­ules or busy reply­ing text mes­sages on his Black­berry.  These folks def­i­nitely put up an image that they are very busy but that does not nec­es­sar­ily mean they are effec­tive.  The only way to man­age a lot of projects or tasks simul­ta­ne­ously in that man­ner is to del­e­gate all the work and act as some time of a project manager.

So what now?  Off with the con­ven­tional wis­dom, ditch the Black­berry, close the instant mes­sen­ger, dodge the folks in the hall and avoid the water cooler at all cost.  Carry around one folder and only one, and put your entire atten­tion into that project.  You’ll be the most pro­duc­tive per­son in the office.

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