Multitasking: Does It Work?

More and more of my clients are telling me that they feel like they are working harder than ever, but they aren’t getting what they want out of life.

Are you in that boat?

Do you feel exhausted and run down after a day of work?

Or do you feel exhilarated and excited about the coming days as you should?

I noticed an interesting effect that happens to me, at least once a week.  I’ll finish my day and feel like I ran a marathon without any training.  Must of gotten a ton of stuff done right?

Then I’ll go to write down what I accomplished that day and found my list to be woefully short.

What the hell happened!

I expended energy like a nuclear reactor and produced nothing.

Anyone in business can tell you if your spending more than you’re bringing in then your business is going to eventually fail.

The same is true in any area of your life.  If your spending all of your energy and not reaping any reward you are going to fail.

Then the question is what was I doing all day?

When I gave myself an impartial review (I look at my life as if I’m a third person) I invariably find the normally highly productive Ryan has turned into a multitasking demon of productivity sucking actions.

Here’s a list of a recent impartial review of a day that left me panting like a dog:

First thing checked email.  THAT WAS THE FIRST MISTAKE (Email is like a carjacker waiting rip the keys to productivity right out of your hands).

Second thing was to read about several interesting articles and products that came through the email (like a fly in a sticky trap every step I took got me deeper and deeper into the trap).

After all of that “RESEARCH” aka B.S. waste of time I decided to work on deciding which project I should work on (no planning, no productivity).

Of course, one of my friends and business partners called so I flapped my gums for a while about all of the other future projects we could do.

Totally ignoring the fact that I have 5 other projects I am working on right now!

And on and on and on…

Flipping between email, texts, phone calls and projects.

My opinion, multitasking sucks!

So this is my attempt at trying to make all of that useless research do someone some good… I found a fantastic article about how the guys in lab coats have taken the time to study this multitasking phenomenon that is pulling the wool over our eyes.  Lulling us into a false sense of productivity.

I highly recommend it, here’s the link:

http://chronicle.com/article/Scholars-Turn-Their-Attention/63746/