How many of you consider yourself pretty good at multitasking? Yep, that’s me. 🙋🏼. This is something many of us have been told is a great thing. I mean so much so that there’s a pretty good chance you even have it listed as a strength on your resume. Again, that’s me. 🙋🏼

I’m reading “The One Thing- The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results” by Gary Keller. I’m only a few chapters in and I’m feeling like it’s going to be an insightful read. Keller talks about how multitasking is possible, but never efficient or effective. What??? I’m not sure I’m on board. Hasn’t multitasking been considered nothing short of the gold standard for years? You know, something we should all try to do as often as possible so that we get even better at it. It’s even a quality we’re told that employers are looking for in the people they hire.Keller challenges readers with this question- “If doing the most important thing is ALWAYS the most important thing, why would you try to do anything else at the same time?” Well doesn’t that just kind of stop you in your tracks and make you reconsider this whole multitasking approach to our work? He claims that when we try to do two things at once we can’t or won’t do either well. He goes on to share that multitasking is an effective way to get less done and an opportunity to mess up more than one thing at a time.  

While people can do two or more things at once, the book argues that we can’t focus effectively on two things at once. Our attention bounces back and forth like a pinball. I can relate because that’s honestly how I feel most days. Would you agree? Keller shared that researchers estimate that workers are interrupted every 11 minutes and then spend almost a third of their day recovering from these distractions. Wow!

In the book, Keller goes on to explain that it’s not that we have too little time to do all the thing we need to do, it’s that we feel we need to do too many things in the time we have. So we double and triple up in the hope of getting it all done. While doing one thing, we’re only seconds away from thinking of something else we could/should be doing. The more time we spend switching between tasks, the less likely we are to get back to our original task. This is how loose ends pile up.  

Multitasking leads to mistakes, poor choices, and stress. We actually waste valuable time switching between tasks and later going back and getting reoriented to restart the task you quit. But we attempt to do it anyway because we’ve been conditioned to believe that it’s a good thing.  

Want to join me in taking a new approach to your work today? Let’s be singletaskers instead of multitaskers, First, we’ll need to figure out what matters most in the moment. Then let’s give it our undivided attention. One task at a time. And see if we do indeed get more done today.