Self Help Daily Poses Question: Is Multi-Tasking Dead?
Joi over @ Self Help Daily today, posted a quote and a question: Is multi-tasking rewarding?
I have always been of the camp that, yes, multi-tasking is THE way for years.
It’s only in the past year or so, as I’ve kept up with various productivity blogs and taken on various projects where there is an intense focus required to meet project deadlines that I’ve realized, perhaps multi-tasking has hampered my success in some ways.
A few months back I was working as Marketing Director for an up and coming Self Help site. Among my responsibilities were getting the word out about the company, developing new marketing collateral for upcoming products, overseeing the site’s usability and building out the affiliate programs as well as PR related tasks.
I was a one-man show and had multiple deadlines to reach on any given day of the week. As the number of tasks to complete kept growing and growing, I began to notice my productivity getting worse and worse. Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only one.
My boss was taking notice as well. And having a life-coach for a boss is a very… sobering experience. We would go toe-to-toe all the time over my work-style. As I said at the beginning of this post, I was and always have been a multi-tasker.
That’s starting to change though. During those months at the helm of the marketing department I came to realize that multi-tasking, in the wrong hands (like my own 
) is a destroyer of productivity.
It became very important and clear for me to manage lists of tasks, and prioritize each one according to deadline or need, and then work in 1-hour chunks on each task throughout the day. I still struggled with staying on task, but it was when I was on top of this approach and forcing myself to stay focused on one task that I would see great leaps and bounds in my productivity.
Near the end of my time at the company we were developing a new feature for our site, and came up with it from scratch, 1-week before we needed to have it ready to go. It became the sole focus of my work,and most of that week leading up to the deadline, I struggled constantly with myself.
“Oh, yeah, I know this tool needs to be done, but I’ve got that press release to write,” so I’d sit staring at a blank screen trying to get started on the press release while my mind was actually churning on what the layout of the new tool would look and feel like for our users.
It’s my humble opinion that multi-tasking creates an aura of confusion for ME. I end up flitting and jumping and finding ways to procrastinate because when I’m trying to multi-task I can often become overwhelmed by the multiple tasks I’m juggling. However, when the pressure is on, and I need to focus on just one thing I can, but usually not until that last minute pressure really takes hold of me.
So it goes that the past couple months I’ve tried harder and harder to focus on “uni-tasking” and though I still struggle mentally with keeping my mind on task, I find that when I am able to sit down at my computer with a clear picture of what I need to achieve in the next XX minutes or hours, my productivity skyrockets.
So, Joi, to answer your question… I think multi-tasking is the devil, lol. It’s hampered my productivity for years, however I will say that multi-tasking is very conducive to great creative bursts of ideas in my experience. The act of running your mind from one task to another for just a few minutes at a time can break down the barriers between your various projects and your ideas can start to bleed into one another and play off of each other and that can sometimes lead to exciting new discoveries, angles, and promotional ideas.
When the job requires that you just get things done though… Uni-tasking and focus couldn’t be more important. And that’s that.
Source: Agree or Disagree? A Quote Questions Multi-Tasking’s Pulse — Self Help Daily
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