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.

All Work and No Play: Can American Workers Get Their Lives in Balance?

Last week was one of the most hectic I’ve had in quite a while. My PR agency, ThinkInk is on a growth tear: we opened an office on the West Coast on June 1^st and we’re about to relaunch our website any moment now.  There was also a trade conference going on here last week and a sick daughter to take care of. I barely had a second to breathe – or sleep.

So I spent most of the weekend working to catch up, and to get ahead of the coming week. Amid the nonstop bustle, something jumped out at me - I was sending emails to both clients and employees throughout the entire weekend. And they responded immediately. Does anyone really have a life anymore?

An article on the Harvard Business School website got me thinking about the ongoing trend of Americans working more and more hours, either to keep up with the bills because their wages are stagnant or because they are afraid of being replaced if unwilling to be available for work at any time. Let’s face it, given the jobs crisis we’re battling, with widespread pay and benefit cuts, workers are doing more for less because they are terrified of losing their jobs. And their employers know it: squeezed employees mean bigger corporate profits. Add to that the slow, steady decline of the country’s organized-labor movement, and you’ve got millions of workers with fewer options.

Another (significant) factor that is making it more difficult to get away from the office, even while at home: our ubiquitous mobile devices.

The vast majority of us are carrying around at least one Internet-connected device at all times, and we are increasingly reluctant to be away from them. Think about it: how many times have you been off work, either on a weeknight, a weekend or holiday, and made a firm resolution to not check your work email or answer calls from the office only to break it because you just can’t stop yourself?

That’s what I thought. The same happens with me.

This isn’t good for us, people. Studies have shown that the more hours we put in beyond a normal workday, the more at risk we are for developing depression. Which makes sense: more time spent working – and worrying about work – means less time to spend with friends and lovers, less time to catch up on sleep and physically take care of ourselves and less time pursuing our other interests (if our jobs and families allow us time to have any!). European countries understand this.

We may need to have to start having more experiments like the one mentioned in the Harvard article. The researchers worked with teams of Boston Consulting Group employees to make sure they took periodic evenings off their mobile devices. Not surprisingly, the consultants ended up saying they were much happier with their work-life-balance and…drum roll, please…with their own job performance and that of their co-workers in the experiment.

This, of course, is kind of a no-brainer. We all know balance is important. It’s just a question of trying to work as much of it as possible into our lives. There will always be room for improvement.

Tablets: The New Mobile Device

My post today comes to you courtesy of the Heartland Mobile Council’s blog, where I penned a short article yesterday about tablets. Are they mobile?

Tablets have been touted as hybrid devices, filling the niche that existed between the laptop PC and the smartphone. While this may be true (just don’t tell that to anyone that was on the netbook wagon a short while ago), for marketers, the tablet is essentially a mobile device and should be treated as such – in my opinion.

With some tablets, this is a natural association to make; many look and function like souped-up versions of their manufacturers’ top-tier smartphone. But the most popular tablet, the iPad, has been positioned as unique from any existing mobile device, and so marketers have approached this platform with strategies that differ from those utilized with the mobile channel.

This, however, is changing, and as tablets become more popular will continue to change.

Part of the reason for this evolution is a gradual refinement in marketers’ approach to mobile marketing. Just a few years ago, bilateral communication, through voice or SMS (text messaging), was the pinnacle of mobile marketing. Now it is a truly rich environment, hinging as much on native apps as on the burgeoning mobile web.

While direct marketing continues to be effective, it’s no longer the only tool in any company’s marketing kit. Tablets, without the universal capability for voice and SMS communication, are the beneficiaries of this fleshed-out mobile marketing ecosystem. Many of the strategies aimed at the smartphone-owning market also translate to the tablet-owning market; rich native apps, access to the mobile web, and the combined capacity of a device that can both be taken on the go and features the computing power comparable to a laptop are all extensions of a robust mobile marketing strategy aimed at tablets.

Which, of course, leads to the other part of the reason that the tablet market will (and should be) considered a mobile market: the tablets themselves.

Since the iPad was introduced last year, the trend has been toward more, not less, direct connectivity. Apps have been developed to augment and improve the ability of most tablets to function as one-to-one communication devices, and every tablet features the critical portability aspect. The prevailing impression of tablet computers may be as couch-bound entertainment devices, but in reality, they’re built for the proverbial road.

Marketers ought to be capitalizing on these two aspects of the tablet trend. Location awareness should figure in heavily in tablet marketing strategies, just as it represents a fast-growing tactic in most mobile strategies. Apps that access the mobile web will eventually take precedence over native apps, just as that evolution is underway in the mobile sphere. Payment via tablet should become as prevalent as payment via smartphone, and tablet apps should become as monetized through placement and advertisement as mobile apps are.

By accepting that the tablet is the latest mobile technology to engage consumers – and not a ‘third-way’ niche product that necessitates a reinvention of the marketing wheel – marketers can begin to leverage this category to its fullest.

Of course, not everyone will agree with my view that the tablet is indeed a mobile device. What’s your take?

You can read the post on the HMC post here and click here for details of the HMC’s Tablet Seminar on April 13th to learn more and continue the discussion!