Pat, the CEO of DavidCo forwarded this article to my attention from Spinweb and their Shift+Refresh Newsletter. I thought it was worth reading so I’m sharing it here verbatim for your enjoyment. You can subscribe to their newsletter by visiting their website.

The Art of Single-tasking
“Eighty percent of success is showing up.” Woody Allen

For those of us in business, we understand the gravity of these words. Often, it is not the smartest, fastest, or luckiest person who finds success. Instead, it’s the person who shows up consistently.

Being present in your work is a valuable ’soft skill’ — one thats not easily mastered. (”Soft skills” refer to personal habits and traits that compliment technical job skills).

Since the boom of personal computers, the pace of business life has increased steadily. Blackberries, cell phones, and email have become the new standard for how work is done. This creates a constant stream of input, tasks, appointments, and priorities. Not only does work still need to be done, now it needs to be done ‘faster’ to stay ahead of the competition.

While, this massive amount of data can be overwhelming at first, there is a point where it becomes so common place that we have adjusted our expectations to manage the stream of data. This new expectation includes the concept of Multi-tasking, being in constant motion, and attempting to do more than one thing at a time.

Brain scan tests have been conducted on the subject of Mutli-tasking, with interesting results. Brain activity for a person focusing on one task show around 80% of the brain churning on the task. With focus split between 2 separate tasks, the same brain shows only 20% activity - or 10% on each task!

Ask yourself, “When is the last time I did the following and how productive was it?
Held a client meeting without a clear agenda and end goal.
Sat through a staff meeting and made notes about the rest of the work you had to get done.
Made a phone call and wrote an email at the same time.
Proofread a document and checked for new email.
Drove your car and read email.

When multi-tasking happens, your brain has to mentally go back to the beginning of a task and catch up to the where you left off. You end up with much less done, let alone possible quality issues. In business, this translates into focusing on each task, goal, or meeting with focused attention. Let’s change our work processes and set a new expectation based on focused, quality work.

Author: Josh Brammer

Josh Brammer is Operations Director at SpinWeb. His background includes media design, video production, strategic planning, and organizational productivity. In his spare time, Josh enjoys his family, good films, reading, throwing a frisbee, and quad espresso macchiatos. Contact Josh at josh@spinweb.net or 866.SPINWEB x2200.

Tags: Best Practices //