Justin Jackson

The decision to support single tasking

If only one lesson has been learned from the difficult economic times it is this one, things are not going back to the way they were.  Changes in marketing strategies, communication channels, preferences of customer contact and the impact of user generated contact have created a new world order. 

While some of the old faithful best practices will remain like creating a customer experience that fosters loyalty some habits need to change.  One area of that could see improvement is multi-tasking.  Too many activities today suffer because they are accomplished in a multi-tasking mode.  And too many participants in these multi-tasking efforts feel distracted and ineffective at the end of the day because of their overloaded schedules.

A simple solution that is gaining support is single-tasking.  More than simply doing one task at a time, single-tasking emphasizes focus, enjoyment of the activity, and closure when a task is completed.  By focusing on one critical objective the work is more polished and done sooner.  Single-tasking helps to create priority #1 and results in a more energized effort and satisfaction. 

The problem with multi-tasking is that many of the tasks lumped into this effort are insignificant.  People will sit through an entire conference call, working on other tasks and attempting to listen and in the end only give an opinion after an hour on a small portion of the call.  Another example exists with webinar participants that are only trying to summarize for people that couldn’t attend, and in the end they get half of the relevant points from the webinar.  Were these people essential to the webinar or conference call?  If not, don’t drag them in. 

Multi tasking only allows a person to do part of a job before they are pulled in another direction.  While three efforts may have been in play for an hour or two, none of them are actually done.  Going back to each one means starting some over and repeating the same work.  So is multi-tasking as effective and efficient as it is depicted? 

At the end of the day employees are being asked to do more and companies are being pushed to realize stronger profits and growth.  Both sides have to consider the most beneficial long term strategy to balancing workloads and job satisfaction.  Multi-tasking may accomplish short term goals but long term job satisfaction may be better suited by enacting single tasking efforts. Success in the new economy will require new thinking, and single-tasking just might make the list.

Article Tags: Single Tasking

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