Multi-tasking is so Overrated!
Those of us in the private practice of engineering and consulting deal with many clients and many projects. Ever had that feeling at the end of the day … Wow! I was so busy today … followed by that feeling of Wow! I didn’t get anything done today? I have — and increasingly more often. I feel there is a ceiling such that the more tasks we try to complete concurrently, the fewer we get completed. When you get overloaded you tend to spend all your time and energy juggling. Think about jugglers for a moment. If they are juggling four balls, they have very little time to inspect or handle any one ball. Conversely, if they’re holding only one or two balls, they can closely inspect and handle them as needed.
There’s a post over at lifehack.org entitled “How to Improve Your Concentration.” Here are some quotes from that article:
“When mastered, concentration can be of unimaginable benefit in our life; through concentration we can increase our productivity and give ourselves greater peace of mind.”
“Concentration means that we can focus on one thing, to the exclusion of all else.”
“Whatever our activity the most important criteria is to give all our focus, concentration and attention solely to the activity at hand. Concentration becomes hopeless when we get distracted by several different things at the same time; to improve our concentration we must stop trying to do several things at once.”
Read more here. Now focus and Git-R-Done!
