Julius Caesar was the first person praised for his ability to do several tasks simultaneously. He could write, read and give orders at the same time, which made his contemporaries look at him in awe. Nowadays any office worker, high school student or stay-at-home mom could probably teach Caesar a trick or too about doing multiple tasks at the same time. Multitasking is not considered a rare gift anymore, rather a necessity.

We eat our breakfast, while reading a morning paper. Answer our cell phone while driving. And easily flick between checking our email, following links on Twitter and chatting on Facebook.

Many people consider multitasking the ultimate evil. I disagree. In some situations multitasking can be an efficient way of getting minor tasks out of the way ASAP (given that you do not have to do an outstanding job on any of them). I do not see anything wrong with chatting to my friend while doing grocery shopping, or cooking while listening to my favorite CD and dancing along. Multitasking can make some routine tasks more fun. It also lets us use our downtime productively (like waiting for a doctor’s appointment and planning our next week’s schedule). The true problem is not the concept of multitasking per se, but the way we use it and overuse it!

Downside of Multitasking.

In the movies we often see successful business man and business woman, scanning sales reports while talking on the phone and giving out short orders to the secretary. These people exude power, self-control and organization. Their actions are mesmerizing. They look much cooler than anyone who is able to concentrate on just one task at a time. And it is not only my personal impression. Multitaskers have convinced themselves and everyone else that they are great and highly efficient at what they do.

In fact there was a whole study conducted at Stanford University by the research team of Eyal Ophir, Anthony Wagner and Professor Nass dedicated to identifying the rare cognitive qualities mutitaskers possessed that made them so great at doing several tasks simultaneously.  The study tested 100 college students rated high or low at multitasking. Results of multiple trials were shocking even to the scientists themselves.

It turned out that people who manage to juggle two-three tasks at once pay a big mental price for their “gift”: 1) Their focus suffers; 2) They are easily distracted  and 3) they are weaker at shifting from one task to another, which meant that they are worse at multitasking than any person who is dreadful at multitasking!

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Script: 5 minutes of your life.

You are sitting at your desk trying to concentrate on your project.

“I really need to get it done by the end of the day… Let’s see… What are the numbers for the last month?… Hold on. Is that a new email? It might be from Terry.”

You open the email box…
“No that’s just spam. Why would I want to buy a Rolex watch?! … Where was I? Numbers for the last month… God, who is writing to me on Facebook? I’ll just say I’m busy… Finally!… Numbers for the last month should be right here… Great!”

Janice from her desk: “Oh my God! Look at that! Hold on! I’ll send it to you!”

You accepting an image file… waiting for it to download… opening it. It is a picture of a KITTEN!

You to Janice, “It’s cute!” while thinking, “Why in the world would she send me a picture of a cat?! I really don’t have time for this! Where was I? Right… Numbers for the past month…”

Distractions can be very annoying, especially when you are trying to get some work done. They are like thousands of midges swarming around you and following you everywhere you go, making it impossible for you to focus on important tasks.

Just by eliminating those daily distractions alone you will instantly improve your focus, double your productivity and avoid unnecessary stress.

Here is how to do it:

1. Block out the noise. Our brain actually starts to deal with distractions the day we are born. A large portion of the incoming information is blocked to prevent us from feeling overwhelmed. The two main senses that we rely on the most are vision and hearing.

The results of much psychological research show us that we mainly get distracted by visual stimuli as well as unwanted acoustic information. The solution to the distraction problem is genial, because it is so simple – get ear plugs or put on a pair of headphones without listening to any music. When you block one of the senses, the other senses become heightened. But it also helps to improve your focus.

2. Avoid visual stimulation. It has been shown that we only block out about 20% of what comes in through our eyes. This is why we need to keep all visual distractions to a minimum. Most of us do not even notice that our eyes are repeatedly turning to email pop-ups, flashing banners, clutter around our desk, tens of icons on our desktop or the person sitting in front of us.

Therefore, turn off your IM, Twitter, Facebook, email notifications. Remove all the clutter from your desk and your desktop. If you work in an open-plan office, find a spot where you will not be directly facing someone. At home just close the door (lock it if you can) and inform your family members that you will be busy working for about an hour.

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Do you remember the plot of the great book “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” written by Lewis Carroll?

The adventure starts when Alice encounters a strange White Rabbit, who takes a watch out of his waistcoat pocket and mutters, “Oh my fur and whiskers! I’m late, I’m late I’m late!”

Curious, because she cannot understand what the rabbit could possibly be late for, Alice tries to stop him. But the White Rabbit ignores her, “No time to say hello, goodbye! I’m late, I’m late, I’m late!” Alice sprints after him and asks him to wait, but the White Rabbit responds, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, I’m overdue. I’m really in a stew. No time to say goodbye, hello! I’m late, I’m late, I’m late!”

As the story goes on, Alice meets the White Rabbit several times, but the question WHERE he was running late to, has never been answered.

Similar, for many of us “I’m late, I’m busy, I don’t have time” have turned into a life mantra. We are always in a hurry. Always stressed out about not being able to meet upcoming deadlines. Always busy running somewhere, doing something, meeting someone.

We learn time management tricks so we can “squeeze” the maximum out of every second and still feel a chronic lack of time. We learn to multitask, because we want to get more things done and then we unlearn multi-tasking, because we realize that our focus and productivity is suffering. We bury ourselves under multiple obligations, numerous must-do tasks and unresolved problems until we can no longer see the light.

This is what I call “the White Rabbit syndrome”.

When you feel that you are “in a stew”, all you do is react and get carried away by it. Your thoughts are focused on avoiding danger. You have no time to think WHY and WHERE you are going.

How to overcome the White Rabbit syndrome?

1. Prioritize. I am sure that you have heard this advice before. So have I. Many-many times. And yet once in a while I find myself stressing over something that will not matter in a week’s time or getting distracted by some insignificant problem. Identifying your priorities is a crucial part of your success and productivity. If you are spending your energy anyway, you might as well be spending it on worth-while tasks.

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Contrary to popular belief, effective time management is not based on doing more things in less time. That’s just not going to happen. Time management is about doing the right things better. That’s why first and most important skill you need to learn is to correctly identify tasks that require your full and complete attention from little tasks that can wait. Before planning your daily routine and choosing what needs to be done on that particular day, ask yourself two questions:

Question #1: Is it what I need to be doing today?

Question #2: Do I want to do it?

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Do you know what the easiest way to destroy any remaining shreds of motivation at the very beginning of the day is? Take your to-do list (if you have one), choose the most urgent, unpleasant and time-consuming task and start imagining yourself doing it. You will see that even if you have not started actually working on it, you already feel tired, and your determination disappears with the speed of light.

I am sure that you know the feeling…

You can plan and schedule. You can leave yourself reminders and put it on your priority list. You can make promises and resolutions. You can organize and reorganize. You can guilt trip yourself and try to artificially boost your motivation. But the bottom line is – it does not work!

Procrastination still remains a flaw most of us put off curing.

And it is not that we are irresponsible or slothful people. On the contrary, we rarely sit around and do nothing. We do plenty of marginally useful but very urgent tasks during the day (like sharpening our pencils, checking our mail box, organizing a messy desk, or getting ourselves a cup of coffee).

Any one of us can be easily motivated to do timely and challenging tasks, as long as those tasks provide us with an excuse not to do something more important. And if we have set our mind on sharpening those pencils, no force on the earth can stop us from doing it!

The more time passes, the closer the deadline looms, the more we are plagued by guilt, the more we become motivated to do other useful, but superficially less important things.

On the other hand, there is a small group of people that seems to complete everything on time and demonstrate the miracle of effectiveness.

How do they do it?

The latest research showed that the way we mentally approach a certain task will largely determine how quickly we will complete it.

When approaching any task, we can use either abstract or concrete thinking. Abstract thinking perceives a task as whole. It puts a mental distance between a person and the goal, making it seem hard to reach. This is why the more we think about doing something that we deem difficult, the less the chances are that we will actually get to it.

Concrete thinking is breaking down a challenging task into smaller, more manageable parts making our goal seem much easier to accomplish.

I call it “lumping” vs. “chunking”. You can either perceive the task as a ‘lump’ that cannot be subdivided and digested or you can break it down into smaller “chunks” that seem more realistic and can be dealt with systematically.

The teenager who wants to go out with his friends, will most likely view writing a paper on the economic factors involved in World War II as an ugly massive single-lump task and do everything in his power to postpone it for later.

Another great way to prevent ourselves from using abstract thinking is to focus on a small percentage of the task that needs to get done. Before getting to any task that seems difficult and timely, promise yourself that you will only complete 30% of it (or spend 45 minutes doing it). Give yourself permission to stop when you said you would, if you do not feel like working on it any longer.

What this technique does, is give you the right to procrastinate, without any feelings of remorse and regret, while still getting some of the work done.

You may feel that overcoming procrastination requires a certain amount of self-deception. And you are absolutely right! It does! Only this time your self-deceptive skills will work to your advantage. Don’t you just love it when you can use one of your flaws to actually improve your character and become a more productive person?

“You have the look of a man who accepts what he sees because he is expecting to wake up.” ‘Matrix’

Did you ever get a feeling that your life is just a long dream? That one day you will wake up to realize that it was just a dream? That in reality you are not just an average person with an average income and an average life? That you are the one who was meant to make a difference in this world?

Well, let me tell you a secret. It is not too late to wake up and make your life what you want it to be.

Most of us have grand plans and dreams. But those dreams are overshadowed by everyday problems that require our immediate attention, worries about what could go wrong, “what if” questions and other insignificant but urgent tasks.

Unfortunately, time does not stand still, waiting for us to turn our great goals into reality. It keeps on going… Minutes become hours… Hours turn into weeks… Weeks become years. One day you may look back at your life and realize that ten years have gone by, but your life has not changed much. Because you kept delaying doing things that should have been done a long time ago.

This probably explains why there are so many articles, books, and workshops that teach us how to make the best out of every second and use our time in the most efficient way. Although, these time management tips and techniques can be beneficial to beat procrastination, they miss one crucial point. We are humans, not machines. We can not be 100% productive for 16 hours a day, doing only the things that we know are important to do.

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