I recently participated in an amazing webinar presented by Dr. Lisa Lang, president of The Science of Business. The topic dealt with moving your business forward – faster.
On any one given day, I have so many projects on my plate that it is sometimes paralyzing. So, you can image my relief when I learned that there is proven, scientific, process for determining how to prioritize projects so I could determine the best use of my time.
Dr. Lang set the stage by saying that every business is riddled with constraints. And in most small businesses, the biggest constraint is YOU (and since I was the audience, that meant ME). She was referring to our time – and boy did I feel like she was pointing at me.
As entrepreneurs and business owners, we have been taught to believe that the sooner we start a project, the more quickly we will finish it. Well, guess what? That is not always the case. In fact, that is ONLY the case when you are working on one project at a time. The fact is that every new project you take on delays all others. So, the more projects you say ‘yes’ to, the more chaos you allow into your life and the fewer projects that actually get completed.
So, why do entrepreneurs – and bosses for that matter – think multi-tasking is good?
Because we have all been taught we must be efficient with the resources we have available to us. So we focus on efficiency.
Dr. Lang demonstrated the reason that efficiency isn’t always beneficial by using the analogy of cooking dinner.
This was her example:
You put a pot of water on to boil. As you are waiting for the pot to boil, you decide to ‘be efficient’ and empty the dishwasher while you wait. While you are emptying the dishwasher, you become distracted putting away the dishes, cups & silverware and do not notice that the water had already started boiling. In fact, it may have been boiling for quite some time before you noticed it. So, in essence, the outcome is that it will now take you longer to complete the task of cooking dinner because of the delay caused by taking on another ‘to do’.
She was very clear and tried to make us all feel better by telling us that these delays are born out of good intentions. But, while our intentions are good and we are really only trying to save time, the outcome is in fact, just the opposite.
In business, our primary goal is not to be efficient. Our goal is to make money. If that is not your primary goal, then what you really have is a ‘hobby’. And that is fine, but don’t fool yourself into thinking that what you have is a business.
The key to productivity is to focus on one or two projects at at time. The reason a second project goes on your list is because there are times when you will need to wait for deliverables from someone ‘other than yourself’ and it makes sense to work on another productive task while you are waiting.
The value of multitasking is over-rated. Multitasking just adds more stress to our lives.
Prioritization is the key – and with a little focus we can all regain some of the time lost due to multi-tasking.
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I felt like that was directed at me! I’m glad someone has said multi-tasking is over-rated, I tired of trying to do it. No more than 2 projects at a time for me from now on.