Without a doubt we feel a great satisfaction in getting things done. So much so, that we’ve got into the habit of trying to get several things done at once believing that by doing so, we’ll achieve more. This is a complete illusion. Multitasking is the enemy of effective productivity. Studies now demonstrate that our productivity goes down by as much as 40% when we multitask. And another study showed that being distracted by email and phone calls causes a 10 point fall in our IQ – that’s the same impact as losing a night’s sleep and twice the effect of smoking marijuana!

Not only does multitasking increase the probability of making mistakes, but if you are trying to do something whilst in conversation with someone, and thus not paying them your full attention, you could be on a slippery path to damaging your relationship with that person.

Let’s be honest with ourselves, we are not multi tasking, we are switch tasking; basically we are stopping doing one task to start another – all the time. Where is the sense in that? (more…)

I recently gave a time management course where one of the sessions was dedicated to our attitude towards time. It’s probably something that the course participants didn’t think would be an integral part of the training, but as we went through the session, I could see, from the expresssion on their faces, that indeed, they felt that changes in
attitude could have a significant influence on how they would manage their time
in the future.

Time is a great leveller; we all have the same amount of time in the day to deal with. And there are two aspects to this –

• how we organise ourselves to get our tasks done
• how we feel about the things we have to do or are not able to do (more…)