Multi-tasking is a crock. Always has been, always will be.
Participants in my leadership sessions have heard me say this, and I’ll repeat it here: “I don’t care who you are, how much money you make, what your title is, or where you went to school… you can only do one thing at a time.”
Just one. You can have a whole bunch of things in various stages of incomplete, you can have several things waiting for your attention, and you can have things so teed up that you move near-seamlessly from one task to the next.
But you’re still moving from one task to the next.
As leaders, this is an essential line of reasoning. If we’re constantly distracted, thinking we’re actually doing several things at one time, all the while simply screwing up things en masse, we need to realize that leadership is about doing it right, not doing it all.
Focus on doing what you’re doing — you can focus on the next thing when you’re done with this thing. I gotta tell you, it just doesn’t seem like this is cutting-edge thinking…
Recently on Twitter, Guy Kawasaki posted a link to the “Dumb Little Man” website, where there was a perfect article about this new movement called “uni-tasking.”
You have got to be bagging me here… doing one thing at a time, and doing it well, is now this trendy little thing called “uni-tasking??” What consultant or academic dreamed up that tasty morsel??
Yeah, OK, whatever… just as long as multitasking dies its appropriate death, I guess I can tolerate some ridiculous fad-focused vernacular so that others can embrace its demise.
But that’s just me…
