the myth of multitasking – Workplace Navigator

Sometimes there is this feeling that you are settling when something is good enough. Like you left some money on the table or you aren’t trying to be an over achiever. But it turns out that good enough will make you happier, satisfied, and content. In Tal Ben-Shahar‘s book, Pursuit of Perfect, there is a big price to pay for the constant striving for perfection. The author paid the price while attending Harvard. Anything less than an “A” was failure, so he worked constantly to make sure he could maintain his perfection. And the price? He wasn’t happy. When you are constantly striving for perfection, you never get to the destination. You think you are but you never arrive. That’s if great success is supposed to be a college degree, making your first million or finally getting married. You might hit a bump in happiness, but the next day, you are back on the perfection treadmill.

I am amazed at how many of us are out there on that treadmill. Beating ourselves up for every B- paper, one pound gained or bad hair day. We are ever vigilant to find out how we failed and how we did not attain success. The constant interior score card. “I should have stayed late”, “I can’t believe I ate the chocolate cake,” or “I never spend enough time with my kids.” It’s the constant balancing act of being all things to all people. I remember thinking I was stretched in college between school work, my social life and my part-time job. That was way before email, smart phones and the digital deluge made you feel overwhelmed, let alone children, aging parents, full-time jobs and a spouse. Ben-Shahar had some great points on how to achieve good enough and to embrace being human.

Here are some ideas on how to be OK with good enough:

1. Accept. We need to accept the good with the bad. The problem is that we tend to over react and ruminate over the failures. In focusing on all that went wrong, we gloss over what went right. I can tell you ever bad training I’ve facilitated but will forget the successes. I remember everything the boss didn’t approve but when it comes to the laundry list of things she has approved, they are buried deep, never to see the light of day. I can’t tell you how many people can’t take a compliment. I say “I love that necklace!” Co-worker “This old thing? My mom bought it from a street vendor in Mexico. I don’t think it’s worth 5 bucks.” We are hard-wired to reject the good and focus on the bad. Accept what is good in your life.

2. Open. Be open to feedback. Perfectionists want to maintain a façade of perfection. They deflect criticism. They hide from it for fear they will crumble. If you seek out feedback from both good and bad experiences, you become more resilient. I seek out feedback from both coaching clients and training participants. I embrace and accept the “That was great, Cathy” and the “I felt rushed” comments equally. I find that people who aren’t open to feedback tend to get paranoid. They are afraid that everyone dislikes them which makes them even more fearful of feedback. Really? There aren’t that many people that are unilaterally disliked (i.e. Madoff, Hussain, etc.). But they are so busy preserving their self-image that they can’t make course corrections like “being a better listener” or “you could delegate more clearly” along with the “you have a great sense of humor” and “that meeting took courage”. Open up to it all.

3. Release. Try and release that you need to be all things to all people all the time. I have to admit that this has been a struggle. This is especially difficult during the holidays. There was a time when I baked 20 different types of holiday cookies with my then small children (they weren’t that helpful and there was a lot of raw cookie dough consumed) and delivered them to all my employees at the restaurant I owned. All the burnt, dented and mal formed cookies befell my stomach and the rest of the “perfect” cookies were given to all my deserving employees. While this was a very noble gesture, it was completely impractical and made me very anxious every Christmas as my kitchen filled with hundreds of cookies, my kids did not have my full attention, and I become overwhelmed. I am wiser now. I instead put out about a third of the holiday decorations, walk right past the chocolate chips at the grocery store and give a card to my employees. To be good enough means to release the unrealistic expectations.

4. Allocate. Find ways to reasonably allocate your time. Perfectionist are looking ways to maximize their day to try an accomplish EVERYTHING. When they don’t? They are crushed by the failure. Be realistic. Can you really take the dog for a walk, work 10 hours a day, make dinner, take your daughter to ball practice, do the laundry, read a novel, AND run for 2 miles? No. You can’t. OK, you can for maybe one day out of the week but you will be toast by the end of the day. Toast. Figure out how much time you want to spend in a given week on everything that is important to you and then back off about 30%. So if you want a date night with your spouse every week, go out every other. If you want to get that project done at work, schedule an hour every day instead of trying to plow through it in a day and a half. Knowing that you have allocated the time and will be able to have an adult conversation with your spouse at least every other week will feel great, and make sure it actually happens instead of feeling guilty that you couldn’t do it all. Allocate your time.

5. Mono-task. Multitasking is exhausting and it’s really just task switching. You aren’t really texting and driving, you are driving, then texting, then driving, then texting, then driving (then crashing). When you spend your day talking on the phone while answering email or watching TV while eating dinner, you are numbing yourself to the world. You are not present and it is completely unsatisfying. So decide you are going to text, and sit down and text. Talk to your brother on the phone and turn off the television. Go out to dinner with your son and put your cell phone in your pocket. You’ve decided where you want to allocate your time, so go be present for that time. Embrace mono-tasking.

The interesting thing is there are certain pockets of our lives that we reserve for perfection. For me, it has been my coaching and facilitation work. It was wonderfully freeing to me when my coach mentor, Satyam Chalmers, said that there was no perfect question. If a question falls flat, your presence is more important than finding the perfect question. Whew. What a relief. It’s the same for facilitation. I can feel like I haven’t followed the “script” but going with the flow of the room is much more important. I’m good enough and enjoying the work so much more.

In addition to being a recovering interrupter, I am also a recovering multitasker. There was a time, about 15 years ago, when I was a commuter in Northern California, in which I would apply makeup, drink a Venti Mocha, talk on my cell phone AND drive my car between Windsor and Petaluma. Not too good. I was under the delusion that I was getting so much accomplished – that I was Super Woman.

As technology exploded in the 90s, there was the imperative to keep 10 balls in the air at one time, and it hasn’t stopped. Dr. David Rock has busted the multitasking myth with his book “Your Brain at Work.” In the book he compares your frontal cortex which is the size of a postage stamp and where you make all your decisions, to a stage in a theater. And this stage is not the size of Madison Square Garden or even Carnegie Hall. It’s more like a puppet theater with room for about three hand puppets max. In Dr. Rock’s analogy, your frontal cortex is being bombarded with actors trying to get on stage. And the more actors you have on stage, the more your decision-making diminishes. My husband takes this analogy literally. I ask, “why were you up at 4 AM?”. He replies, “all the actors rushed the stage”. For each additional task (actor) on stage, the more your performance drops.

Christine Rosen, who wrote the article “The Myth of Multitasking,” agrees with Dr. Rock and says that the result of multitasking is a 10-point drop in IQ or twice the drop as for marijuana users. And we all know that multitasking while driving (you know, like applying make up and talking on your cell phone) is worse than drunk driving. Tsk, Tsk.

So here are a few steps to bring us back on the road to monotasking:

1. Clear. As in clear all the clutter. I have been letting my magazine subscriptions lapse. I don’t get the local newspaper anymore. Set the timer and take 10 minutes to clean out your kitchen junk drawer, your closet or your car. De-cluttered means less distractions.

2. List. Close your office door and make a list. Do a brain dump of everything you want or might want to get done takes a lot of actors out the mix and off your “stage.” If I’m in class and just remembered I need shampoo from the store, that bottle of shampoo is going to sit on my stage (maybe) and trip up my other actors. Do a brain dump to get it off the stage. Or better yet, get Wunderlist (a wonderful free app for making and organizing task lists) and put it on your grocery list.

3. Focus. This is the hard part. Pay attention to the task at hand. If you are on a conference call and start going through your email; you are not listening. You are reading email. If reading email is more important, then hang up the phone. If the conference call is more important, then shut down the email. You are going to have to start making choices. So choose.

4. No. You’re going to have to do it. Turn off the TV. Send it to voice mail. Don’t go to the conference. Get off the committee. I can see you rolling your eyes but it’s true. Just because you can check email 24/7 doesn’t mean you have to. The world will still be there tomorrow. Just say NO.

5. Imperfection. Do it imperfectly at first. It’s OK. It’s fine if you back slide a little. Small messy steps are more important than no steps. There is going to be that phone call you were waiting for as you’re driving north on 101. Maybe you can pull over and take it. Maybe you can explain and call them back later. Don’t beat yourself up.

6. Meditation. Taking just a few minutes a day to meditate can make a huge difference in your ability to focus. Lydia Dishman writes in a article for Fast Company, “It takes only five minutes a day and plays to a common theme in our information-deluged culture. Start by picturing a TV screen with a news ticker running along the bottom”. Find some ways to fit meditation into your schedule and your ability to focus or laser in on one task will improve.

The fact that you’re aware and trying will help you make more effective and smarter decisions. Sometimes a shampoo bottle will come rolling onto the stage. It’s OK.

Are you putting your best cast on the stage or is it full of shampoo bottles?