Today’s technology and our ways of thinking, feeling, knowing, believing, and behaving are all tied together. Not only do we demand that things happen immediately and that we get what we want at the snap of our fingers (or the click of a mouse) but we also demand that people should be able to finish so many more tasks than anyone once could. This can lead people to multi-task: they will take on as many as ten tasks at the same time, and they claim that doing so saves them time and energy. However, can multi-tasking really work?
Studies show that multi-tasking is still not a good answer to the need for productivity in the workplace. Although studies also show that women ar e better multi-taskers than men, neither gender can still finish more than the required load at any one time by taking on many different tasks and expecting to get the job done. In fact, multi-tasking slows down work in that it can make people feel burned out easily: because people put too much work on their hands, they lose all the energy that they need when more work comes along. In effect, people can leave the workplace after being battered with work – and only because they took too much upon themselves in the first place.
So how can we solve the problem of multi-tasking? Prioritizing is the only way to go, it seems: instead of talking on the phone, finishing your report, writing your proposal, looking at your accounts, replying to your emails, chatting with a friend, checking on your children, and talking to your boss all at the same time, you can make a list of priorities. For instance, if all of these tasks are urgent, you can list your tasks from easiest to hardest to finish, so that you finish up many more tasks faster (and get a good sense of accomplishment at the same time). On the other hand, if the tasks are of varying urgency, you can go with the most urgent tasks first, and then move on to more tasks the next time around.
From The Blogs
|
01-24
|
By Carole Fogarty Eliminate and simplify:A special feature: Multi tasking is out and pleasurable, easy living is in. Multi tasking dilutes your focus, splits your energy, keeps you stuck in your head,...
查看全文
|
|
04-23
|
As an online entrepreneur you will always be faced with more tasks that you need to get done than you can manage. There will always be new ideas and opportunities that are tempting to pull you away fr...
查看全文
|
|
05-21
|
The traditional approach of prioritizing, where you assign a task a high, medium or low priority (or maybe even something more meaningless than that) is outdated and largely ineffectual in today’s wor...
查看全文
|
|
09-16
|
Multi-tasking; it seems that people are going to have big debates about this topic until the end of time.Recently, a book came out that claimed to “bust” the multi-tasking myth - as many authors have ...
查看全文
|
|
03-12
|
Note: This is a guest post by David B. Bohl of SlowdownFAST.We try to achieve excellence in all areas of our lives – we want success at work and advancement in our careers.We want to give our families...
查看全文
|
|
06-15
|
Note: This is a guest post by Mary Jaksch from Good Life Zen. Do you try to keep too many balls in the air? I do. I try to stuff at leasttwo lives into one. I’ve tried various ways to accomplish this ...
查看全文
|
|
06-24
|
Or one reason I don't answer my cell-phone:One study by researchers at the University of California at Irvine monitored interruptions among office workers; they found that workers took an average of t...
查看全文
|
|
06-25
|
Computer programmers don't do it either. Ellen Ulmann:"When you are programming, you must not let your mind wander. As the human-world, knowledge tumbles about in your head, you must keep typing,...
查看全文
|
|
07-16
|
Asmita:Don’t you just hate it when you’re at a party trying to strike a conversation with a cute guy over a drink but the bite sized appetizers keep making you go back to the serving area every te...
查看全文
|
|
07-23
|
Freelancing is often a juggling act. Not only are you working on several different projects at any given time, but youve probably also got projects that are all at various stages of development. Start...
查看全文
|
More Articles
|
|