Excellence while Multi-Tasking

Excellence while Multi-Tasking

It is observed that for an average person, he / she will have at-least three things on their mind at any time and they try to juggle their mind between these three based on the priorities he or she considers. Naturally one may be excelling in one of those three tasks and the other two will mostly be at the passing cut off levels. One feels good that he/she has not failed in any of the tasks inspite of the juggling. One moves from one juggle to another on continuous basis and settles down as some kind of level of excellence which is far less than the level of excellence one is capable to achieve.

Most of the information comes to us in the form of either e-Mail, or SMS or phone call or any connection in social media we are connected with. The information comes in completely unstructured manner and actually it comes at the convenience of the sender and most of the times it is at inconvenient time for you. The technology has enabled us to create alerts for all the incoming information in order to not to miss any of the incoming information. Many a times we believe that we must react to the information as soon as possible and we try our best.

The world we live and operate today has become fast and the speed is increasing as we move forward. It has become more connected, thanks to the technology, which is simplifying the networking on continuous basis. It has become more data oriented, data dependent for decision making as we have the technology to gather, analyse and infer from the vast data available across the world in a very short time, some time almost real time. One is expected to live and thrive in such an environment where one is connected for 24 hours of the day, one keeps on getting information 24 hours of the day, one is expected to react 24 hours of the day. This pattern of unstructured information inflow demands us to multitask continuously and perform all the tasks demanded out of us by the information received. The information inflow is so erratic and so diverse that one cannot plan for the same but one is expected to be performing at higher levels across all the tasks all the time.

Is it possible to be performing at higher level of excellence and continuously increase it across all the tasks that we perform?

Yes; we can simply do it by doing one task at a time

Let us take a situation of a meeting in an office for discussing strategy for moving forward. Let us look at the scenario just before the meeting is going to start. Most of the attendees will be senior members of the team and they are called to contribute and collaborate to build the strategy. One by one the attendees come settle down in their seat and first thing they look for is a LAN connection or a WIFI connection to connect their laptops or iPads. One simple question I want to ask here; How many of the attendees will need information through network to enhance their contribution to the ongoing meeting for strategy formulation?.  Atleast 90% + members will answer that they will not get any help. You ask another question what is the possibility that if you do not react to any of these disturbances for the duration of meeting things will turn in to irreparable damage? Mostly you will get an answer as NIL. So if you do not allow yourself to get distracted by the incoming information, you can focus on the task at hand i.e. formulation of strategy and will definitely display higher level of excellence which you are capable of. So try attending the meetings without connecting yourself with external world and see the difference in your contribution.

This is fine for meetings, but we cannot do the same at our desk, where we are connected and onslaught of information continuously distracts us; we cannot refuse a call or an email when it lands in our inbox or someone dropping by in unplanned manner. Yes it is right that we cannot refuse the information inflow but we can always regulate the outflow (our reaction to the distraction) from our side. Ideal way is to look at e-mails / messages intermittently in between the tasks you are performing and not while you are performing a task. This way you do not get distracted while you are performing your task and you do not miss any of the information you receive and that you need to respond. This definitely enables us to focus on the task at hand till it is completed and do not miss any of the information coming. Many a times, we suddenly remember something that we might have missed to do and we get distracted, we stop the current task and start the new task. Once this chain starts then we lose complete control over what we are doing and our level of excellence drops significantly. A simple method of creating a to-do list solves this problem. It is a good practice to create a to-do list and ensure that all the tasks are listed on it and we complete them without fail. So as soon as we remember any of the task in the middle of performing another task, just add this task to the to-do list with appropriate noting and continue the task at hand till its completion. Once the task at hand is completed, pick up the next priority task form the to-do list and continue performing it at your high level of excellence.  

One will feel a little odd when we start this method as we typically are addicted to respond any information at the earliest; but slowly one gets used to it and one is able to do multitasking with higher level of excellence through one thing at a time.