Are we nearing the end of a silly, macho fashion?

 
For years, some people have actually prided themselves on the supposed ability to do several things at once, even giving the habit the grand-sounding name of multitasking. Business, in particular the leadership aspect, took the new craze to its heart, since it seemed to promise a way to multiply the output of expensive people. The reality, of course, was different.

Ever since this site began, more than three years ago, I have written periodically about the foolishness of multitasking as an aspiration or a process. At first, I felt something of a lone voice. Now, I’m glad to say, recognition of the dangers and drawbacks of multitasking has become mainstream — witness this article in Canada’s Toronto Star newspaper (“Can you finish this story without being interrupted?”).

A slew of research studies have proved that fragmenting your attention is neither efficient nor effective; and that actions undertaken literally with ‘half a mind’ or less show the results in lowered quality and increased mental stress.

Doing too many things at once doesn’t save any time, and could be harming your judgment

What first attracted me to The Star’s piece was the opening quote from Lord Chesterfield:

In the 1740s, Lord Chesterfield offered the following advice to his son: “There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once, but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.”

To Chesterfield, singular focus was not merely a practical way to structure one’s time, it was a mark of intelligence, while “hurry, bustle, and agitation are the never-failing symptoms of a weak and frivolous mind.”

There you have it, in a nutshell. Hurry, bustle and agitation — all the hallmarks of today’s macho management — are the “never-failing symptoms of a weak and frivolous mind.”

Multitasking is, in reality, no more than trying to work while distracted. It is a kind of adult ADHD: a hyperactivity that is more likely to become a disability than an advantage. We aren’t designed to work like that. If we do, what results is, at best, shallow and mediocre. With no time to think clearly or focus properly, we’re pretty much forced back on applying conventional answers in conventional ways. It’s like fast food as opposed to a proper meal, carefully prepared and eaten with relaxed enjoyment.

‘Hamburger Management’

It’s this way of working and leading that caused me to coin the term: Hamburger Management. Sometimes a hamburger and soda in a fast food joint is genuinely all you have time for, but if it becomes your staple diet, you can expect to suffer as a result. It’s quick — sure — but it’s neither a balanced diet, nor one that contains all the human body needs for good health. People cannot live by sugar, salt, white bread and fat alone.

It’s exactly the same in your working life. If you spend your time distracted by everything that happens to catch your attention at that moment, you can only give each one the mental equivalent of a 99-cent hamburger: hardly enough to satisfy what it may need, let alone deserve.

Multitasking isn’t a substitute for setting sensible priorities

That’s how many people use it: as a way of avoiding the time and effort needed to review what’s in front of them and establish sensible priorities. They convince themselves they can do everything — and end up doing nothing properly and little of it even adequately.

Lord Chesterfield told his son:

“The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character and will.”

If leaders don’t have the ability to display suitable judgment, character and will, they don’t deserve either the leadership position or the salary that goes with it. If they fail to develop such an ability due to their own unwillingness to make the effort required, they probably don’t deserve to be employed in a professional capacity at all.

If the tasks before you are dealt with using the tiny slivers and crumbs of attention available from a mind parceled out into fragmentary working on a dozen things at once, it won’t be surprising if your work reflects almost exactly what you have put into it: somewhere between nothing and an inadequate morsel. And that’s without adding to the problem by intentionally trapping your mind in a maze of instant messaging, web surfing and e-mailing.

Give it up! Swear off multitasking right now! Your standard of work and your health — mental and physical — will improve markedly if you do. One of the best routes to success, in almost any endeavor, is to learn the skill of paying close attention only to what matters. The fashion for multitasking needs to go the way of crinolines and powdered wigs.

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