Stop
Multitasking! Start Rotational Tasking.
Make The Most
Efficient Use Of Your Time
Master Your
Professional Time Management
It seems that everybody is
always multitasking (or, if you prefer, multi-tasking). This has become a broadly accepted business
practice as well as a popular means of social relationship
management. The situation, in reality, is quite lamentable – the
ultimate result of most multi-tasking is a confused mess of partially
(or shoddily) finished responsibilities, excessive (and highly
unhealthy) stress and overall inefficiency. It is apparent that most
Human Beings are only capable of doing a very limited amount of
multitasking. At an organizational or enterprise level, the
cumulative effect of multi-tasking is a breakdown in communications,
management, problem-solving and goal attainment.
It's really quite simple.
Multitasking generally requires a division or scattering of
intellectual focus, which leads to predictably poor or unfinished
results. Going further, the multi-tasking culture is creating a
working environment that is more effort-focused and less
results-oriented. Readers and followers of The
Braintenance Blog, The
Taking Command Blog and The
Douglas E Castle Blog are familiar with this tendency and its
negative trend in terms of both health and performance. Every project
manager should become intimately familiar with using rotational
tasking in place of multitasking. The greatest benefit of rotational
tasking is that it permits steady focus on each of the tasks rather
than a diffused (and ofttimes confused) focus – more like a glossing
over – of a set of tasks.
Since time is your principal
asset and a limited resource, rotational tasking is simply a better
way than multitasking in terms of intelligent and efficient time
management. And your professional and personal time management are critical to your quality of work and life.
Realistically, when you are
confronted or faced with a number of tasks, instead of diving into
the pool of them and reverting to you multitasking 'default mode',
try to observe the following protocol if you'd like to actually
accomplish a better quantity and quality of work [it helps if you can
envision a sort of matrix table in your mind while you proceed
through these steps]:
Step 1: Prioritize the tasks
in terms of deadline. What needs to be completed first?
Step 2: Prioritize the tasks
in terms of their relative importance. Which is most critical in
terms of the quality of your performance and result?
Step 3: Begin rotational
tasking to finish the whole set of tasks. “Rotational Tasking?”
As I write this article I can hear you asking the rhetorical
question,”What does he
mean by Rotational Tasking?”
Simply organize your tasks
in two lists, the first one being the deadline list, and the second
being the “first things” first importance list. Go to the first
list first, and commence work at full steam on the first project
until your focus begins to wander. Then, go to the first item on the
second list (assuming the two items are not the same task, in which
case you would go to the second item on the second list), and
commence work at full steam until your focus (and creative juices)
begin to wander. Then go back to the first list (i.e., the deadline
list), choose the second item and proceed with your work at full
steam until you arrive at a natural fatigue point. Just continue this
pattern, 'Lazy Susan style' until you've completed the full set of
tasks. Congratulations – you are now rotationally tasking!
You will notice that you
have actually made genuine progress toward the full-quality
completion (in an incremental fashion) of several tasks, instead of
slogging through a swamp of confusion that just refuses to disappear
without a massive sacrifice in the quality of your performance. You
might also notice that you are far less fatigued than you would
normally be had you attacked the set of tasks through your
ill-acquired habit of multitasking.
Rotational tasking will
allow you to function far more efficiently and effectively than
through either a linear approach (the “old school” approach of
simply completing one task – no matter how fatigued you become and
how much your focus eventually wanders – and then going onto the
next) or a multitasking approach.
Thank you for reading this
article, and we hope that you find it helpful. If you did:
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