Multi-tasking: More like Multi-not-tasking

15. Feb, 2010 0 Comments

It’s easy to get overwhelmed with different tasks that come at us freelancers during the day.

The phone might ring, some urgent work comes in, meetings pop up, IM messages come in, emails coming through, not to mention all the social media and information we have at our finger tips. And it’s getting worse. If you use gmail and you don’t turn buzz off, when you check you’re emails, you’re also told how many unread “buzz’s” you have.

I don’t think I’m the only freelancer that has at least 10 different programs open, and 10 different browser tabs open all at the same time.

The fact is, we’ve gotten so good with technology, we have so much information available to us, that it’s incredibly easy to be doing lots of things at once. Without even noticing, while writing this post, I’m talking to a designer about some work on MSN, I’ve checked my website statistics twice, and checked my email twice as well.

I’ve written about task management before. It’s all well and good, but if we want to really be productive, we have to remove distractions.

On one of the episodes of Freelance Radio, Von Glitcshka talked about having a mode where he unplugs his phone, closes his door, closes down all his programs, and just focuses on doing the task at hand.

In 4 hour work week, Tim Ferris talks about doing jobs in batches to save time. He will check and answer emails at 2 specific times during the day.

There’s a study somewhere that says after a distraction, it takes something like 15 minutes to get your mind back into the work you’re doing.

Multi-tasking is multi-not-tasking. As freelancers, we have many hats to juggle, and often many jobs on at the same time. 2 hours spent solidly on a task with no distractions can yield more results than a full day of distractions.

Distractions are unavoidable, but we can take steps to cut them down, and perhaps we can set some ‘project time’ aside, and hopefully we’ll get more done in less time.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!