Separating the Wheat From Chaff: Can We Focus on What’s Really Important?

I frequently comment that I can’t multitask. And yet I often find myself doing just that.

I frequently talk to clients on the phone while emailing others while fielding a barrage of Google Chat questions from my employees. When you have to juggle so many balls – handling clients, hunting for new ones, taking care of employees and family – sometimes your brain just sort of gets stuck in a groove and you find yourself spinning your wheels without really getting anywhere.

A few weeks ago, right after barely emerging from one of the most hectic weeks I’ve ever had, I wrote a post about how important it is to find that illusive work-life balance and how our ever-present mobile devices make it increasingly difficult to abandon the cares of the office even for a couple of hours.  To reinforce my argument, a recent post from the Harvard Business Review goes further, raising the issue of whether all of the whirlwind activity we engage in simultaneously is actually helping us meet our goals in a timely fashion.

HBR blogger Greg McKeown argues that it isn’t, and I agree with him. I call this the confusing activity with achievement syndrome.  McKeown also suggests that narrowing our focus instead of trying to do everything at once will help us get each of the things we’re trying to accomplish done better and more quickly.

And he certainly has the data to back up his argument. In 2009, researchers at Stanford found that heavy media multitaskers are more susceptible to distraction by irrelevant stimuli. On top of that, they also have a reduced ability to switch tasks easily.

Of course, this information can also be arrived at via plain old common sense. The more things we do at the same time, the worse we do each thing.

In his post, McKeown links to another HBR piece, this one about Steve Jobs and how the late Apple co-founder pulled the then-moribund company from the brink of bankruptcy in 1997 by jettisoning most of the products the company was making. Some of those products were bringing in profits, but Jobs, famous for his devotion to simplicity, chose to focus on just four product lines. That’s it.

And we all know how that one worked out for Apple, don’t we?

I’ve been having to do similar things at ThinkInk – albeit, of course, on a much smaller scale. For example, the company is growing and I am constantly looking at ways to make the agency more efficient while delivering the very personal service we have delivered as a smaller operation. And I am also forced to do the cost-benefit analysis of keeping some clients - and not because they cant’t pay. Sometimes you get into bed with the wrong partners. If that’s the case, my advice is to give up what isn’t essential or creating value to your agency so you can focus on the essentials and value-creators better.

To be sure, I don’t see myself going to the lengths the girl in this droll video does to eliminate the distractions of her gadgets. But I get the message, and I can see myself making a conscious effort to quit multitasking so much.

Maybe we all can. And actually get more done. And done better.

Here’s hoping.