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More, Better, Faster — How?
More, better, faster. The mantra of the modern work place
has picked up in tempo even as the economy has slowed. In today’s pared-down
work force, tasks once shared by many become the responsibility of single
individuals.
In response, multitasking — juggling several jobs simultaneously — has come
to symbolize the 24/7 lifestyle. Operating on fast-forward, workers talk on
the phone, surf the Web, and send e-mail, all at once.
"Doing more than one activity at once is not only not unusual, it’s
expected," according to a study by the California-based Institute for
the Future. The institute reported that 40 percent of employees face six or
more interruptions per hour and that the average worker deals with 190
messages a day.
What Gets Done?
How many tasks actually get accomplished with multitasking? It may well
depend on the complexity of the tasks being juggled.
Most of us can talk on the phone while we slit open the day’s mail, but
analyzing the engineering report for a new building site at the same time you
review a major supplier’s invoices takes multitasking to a different level.
In such cases, what we call multitasking is really task switching, costing
time instead of saving time, according to a study published by the American
Psychological Association.
The time lost switching gears for a new task increases with the complexity
and unfamiliarity of the task, the study found, but even when switching to a
familiar task, the mind needs time to readjust. The result? Rather than more,
better, and faster work, task switching leads to less, poorer, and slower
work.
What Can We Do?
If we can’t do it all at once, how will we ever get it done?
The first step toward effective time management is often getting control of
the endless stream of paper that turns working time into searching time. To
get started, time management experts suggest the following steps:
- Keep an activity log. List all the tasks you
expect to accomplish in a given time frame — say four hours — and note
how long you think each job will take. Write down the time you start and
complete each activity. Compare your log to your estimate. How realistic
were you in your estimates?
- Make a master to-do list. Keep a master list of
unfinished jobs. Devise a system of priorities, perhaps flagging high-priority
tasks in red or separating jobs into sections by priority, grouping them
by deadline. For example, you could have sections labeled
"Today," "This Week," and "This Month."
- Clean house. Go through every piece of
paper on your desk. If the paper represents work to be done, note the
task on your master list.
If you need to keep the paper for later use, put it in a folder, label
it, and file it so that you can find it.
Get rid of paper you don’t need. Throw it away, recycle it,
or pass it along to someone who needs to see it.
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