I recently came across some new research out of the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota, assessing the best conditions for successful multi-tasking.
We all have multiple tasks to execute daily in order to be successful. Whether you’re an owner, C-level executive, realtor or manager of realtors, without a good strategy for multi-tasking, you’re performance will suffer.
The results of this research will not surprise the best performers, as they have probably been utilizing the following strategy intuitively. The findings, however, serve as a great reminder for all of us.
Two separate experiments both found the following two points to be the most critical with regard to successful multitasking:
- While the best performance is found when people stop thinking about one task and fully transition their attention to the next task, it is difficult for people to transition their attention away from an unfinished task. As a result, their subsequent task performance suffers. Being able to finish one task before switching to another is, however, not enough to enable effective task transitions.
- Time pressure (or a time limit) when approaching a task is needed in order to help disengage from the first task and thus move to the next task. This time-constrained approach to switching tasks contributes to higher performance on the next task.
Most of us can relate to these findings – Most successful people have done this at some point, if not currently. Personally, my best performance almost always comes when I begin the day by listing the most important tasks to be completed, estimate the time to complete each task, hold myself to it, and then move, one by one, through the list of tasks.
Ask your best performers and those who are lagging what they do to plan their day – You may find the above strategy to be the differentiating factor between them.
Editor’s Note: This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn. Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you’re an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the “comments” link below.
