Multi-Tasking & Other Lies
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by Dave Crenshaw
Business Coach & Founder of Fresh Juice Strategy

You & your company could uncover tens of thousands of dollars in lost productivity and sales every year.

Hi, I’m Dave Crenshaw, Business Coach and founder of Fresh Juice Strategy. I’d like to share a valuable principle with you. It’ something I’ve taught to many business owners and executives I’ve worked with. Your investment in learning this principle will be about 15 minutes of active listening. Afterward I will also offer you something even more valuable, which you’ll be free to take action on or ignore. At the end of this seminar, at the very least, you will have learned a valuable principle, one that is likely new to you. Applying this principle will be the return on your investment of about 15 minutes of active listening.

I use the word “Active” listening carefully, because it has everything to do with the principle I’m about to teach you. Now, I know it’s not practical for me to expect everyone who’s listening to this in the car to pull over to the side of the road for the duration of this CD! But hopefully you’re not attempting to Multi-task while you’re listening to this. Why?

I’ll let the words of one of my favorite authors explain. Mark Twain, is famous for many quotes. One of the most memorable quotes he has been credited with is the following: "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics." Those of you who have a background in accounting or statistics will get an especially big chuckle out of that.

May I give you my personal, 21st century version of his 19th century quote? I tell my Fresh Juice Strategy Clients: “There are lies, damned lies, and multi-tasking.” Does that shock you?  Multi-tasking has become something of a heroic word in our vocabulary. Many executives pride themselves on their ability to “multi-task”.  Recent job descriptions that I have seen even ask that potential employees have the ability to multi task.  The problem is multi-tasking, as most people understand it, is deceptively counter-productive. Multitasking is tremendously costly. Multitasking hurts us every time we attempt to engage in it.

I should clarify a few definitions. When I speak of multitasking as most people understand it, I am not referring to doing something completely mindless and mundane in the background such as exercising while listening to this CD, eating dinner and watching a show, or having the copy machine operate in the background while you answer emails. I call this “background tasking”.  When most people refer to multitasking they mean simultaneously performing two or more things that require mental effort and attention. Examples would include saying we’re spending time with family while were researching stocks online, attempting to listen to this CD and answering email at the same time, or pretending to listen to an employee while we are crunching the numbers. What most people refer to as multi-tasking, I refer to as switch tasking. Why? Because the truth is we really cannot do two things at the same time—we are only one person. So, what we are really doing is switching back and forth between two tasks rapidly, typing here, paying attention there, checking our “crack berry” here, answering voicemail there back and forth back and forth at a high rate. Keep this up over a long period of time, and you have deeply engrained habits that cause stress and anxiety and dropped responsibilities and a myriad of productivity & focus problems. It’s little wonder so many people complain of increasingly short attention spans!

When we speak of multitasking, what we really mean is that we are switch tasking: switching rapidly between one task and another. Yet, each time we switch, no matter how quickly that switch takes place in our mind, there is a cost associated with it. It's an economic term called switching cost—and the switching cost is high. When I taught a client of mine this principle, she shared an experience that clearly illustrates switching cost.

She told me about one particular afternoon when she was trying to accomplish three things at the same time. One was answering email, the other was talk to a distribution representative on the phone and the third was to answer questions from her assistant. I asked, “So what was the consequence of doing that?” She said, “Oh it was horrible! At one point my distributor said 'are you okay?' I replied, Yes, I'm fine, why? The distributor asked, ‘Because I just asked you a really important question and you didn't say anything!”
I then asked my client, “How much time was all of this taking?” “About an hour,” she replied. So I asked, “Well, then what did you do?” She replied, “I finally decided that I couldn't multi-task. I apologized to that distributor and went out into the hall and took the phone call.” “And how long did that phone call take?” I asked. “Well, about 10 minutes,” she answered. I asked, “And when you came back inside and helped your assistant, how long did it take?” “About 3 minutes.” “And when you finally answered that email how long did it take to answer the email?” I asked again. “About 3 minutes,” the owner replied with a smile, this time, knowing where I was heading. “So,” I said, “what you are telling me is that you spent an hour trying to multi-task three things and didn't accomplish any of them. But, when you handled them one by one you accomplished them all in under 20 minutes.” She sheepishly replied, “yes I guess that is what happened.”

A recent study by Basex research was published in many magazines. The study surveyed over a 1,000 office workers across the country. In this study they found that the average company was losing 28% or 2.1 hours per day per employee because of interruptions and because of multi tasking. How many hours do YOU work per week? Divide that by 4. A little more than that number is the total number of hours you are likely throwing away. What the study analyzed is not only the cost of the interruption itself, meaning the time lost during the interruption, but also the mental inertia that it took to get back on task after the interruption took place. When multiplied by the number of workers in the United States they estimated that switching and interruptions were costing our economy $588 billion dollars per year.  How much of that $588 billion dollar bill do you and your company account for?

Think of switching cost as interest you pay for borrowed  time. When you borrow money, you have to pay interest. Everyone understands that simple principle. Time is no different. When you borrow time by switching attention from one thing to pay attention to another, you must also pay interest. And time demands a brutal interest rate. Time is a loan shark. Yet people continue to pay this loan shark because they believe that multitasking is true.

When I shared this principle of switch-tasking to a CEO of a respected national company, she was astounded. We did a budgeting exercise where we looked at how much time she was spending in a given week. In the process of budgeting her time and looking at how much time she was spending on each activity, we found that she was extremely over budget in what she thought she could accomplish in a week. The truth is, there are only 168 hours in a week, and yet she had put down that she was accomplishing 188 hours worth of work in that week! As we went through the process, we realized where the extra time was coming from. It was from the fact that she was doing research at the same time that she was spending time with her family. When we cam across this, I taught her the principle of multitasking being a lie. At first she defended the time that she was spending, but then she realized that she couldn’t truthfully do both. She was either spending time with one or the other and switching rapidly between the two. In reality she was rarely spending any time with her family. She was really doing business research spending in the presence of her family. There is happy end to this story, however.

The next day we met she burst into the room, full of excitement. She exclaimed, “I'll have you know that I spent time with my family last night and I didn't multitask! I got home and said let's go to dinner. My kids were surprised.  But we went to the restaurant and I paid attention to them and I didn't think about anything else but spending time with my family. At first I don't think they took me seriously. After they realized that I was really spending time with them and paying attention to them they were excited and I could tell they really appreciated it.” This CEO had come to understand that not only was switch-tasking hurting her business, but it was taking a toll on her family. Once she clearly understood the truth and received some guidance on how to take action, she committed make changes. Her business, her family, and she are all better because of it. Avoid paying interest, especially when it comes to time!

There is a reason behind our increasing addiction to multi-tasking or switch tasking during the last ten years. The answer lies in misuse and misunderstanding of technology. We mistakenly believe that technology streamlines our life.  I would submit to you that technology does simplify our life and makes it more efficient, but only when used properly.

But the misuse of technology, or rather, the belief that technology simplifies our life is something like handing gasoline and matches to a group of boy scouts and saying "make fire." We must learn how to use these things properly. When I say technology, I don't necessarily mean the latest PDA or blackberry and I've heard some people refer to them affectionately as “crackberry”, meaning they could never put anything down. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about absolutely everything that we have as a resource to make use of our time properly, including paper planners, post notes, pens and pencils, and so on. We have been misusing these things for a long time and when we miss-use them, the consequence is that we actually rob time from ourselves to pay for inefficient activities such as moving papers, jumping from answering one email to the next, jumping from answering email to a voicemail and back again, and again, and again, and again and calling it multi-tasking, when in fact, it's split-tasking in a million different ways and we can't keep up with it.

As a One-to-One Consultant, I’ve found training is meaningless without personal application and clear action steps. Allow me to help you find some personal application and then we’ll wrap things up.

APPLICATION ONE: Find out how much you are losing personally because of multitasking and interruptions. To estimate what your loss is, multiply the number of hours you work in an AVERAGE WORK DAY by 28%. Remember, 28% is the AVERAGE loss of hours per person due to interruptions & multitasking.  Next multiply that number by your average salary per work hour. The answer you now have is your monetary loss per day as an individual. Now multiply that number by 21.65, the average business days per month. The answer you now have is your total loss per month. Multiply that number by 12 and you have your total annual loss due to multi-tasking and switching. My guess is that you will be shocked at the result of a little math. The first step is writing down the number of hours you work in an average workday. Will you do it?

APPLICATION TWO: Become aware of how much you switch-task. The easiest way to become aware is by keeping a daily log. Keep a sheet of paper or a notebook by your office or on you at all times. Every time you switch to a task, no matter how small, write down the new task that you are performing. At the end of the day go back through that list and look for how many times you were interested. Pay careful attention to both active interruptions and passive interruptions. Active interruptions are interruptions that you initiated. These are things such as checking your email, checking your voicemail, getting online and do instant message chatting. Passive interruptions are those that came at you without you taking action. This things would be notifications on your desktop telling you that emails are coming in. Someone coming and walking into your office, a phone call coming in. All of these are passive interruptions. On the list that you made put a start next to each interruption and count the total number of interruptions. If you do this for just three days you are likely to be astounded at the number of different tasks you are performing within a single day.  The first step is to get a notepad and pen to keep with you and record your activities. Will you do it?

After you take action on this principle, you’ll be able to calculate one more thing: your return on investment. When you take action, today, on what you’ve learned from this brief training, what will be your personal ROI for listening to this CD actively for 15 minutes? $50, $100, $5000? It all depends on what you’re worth per hour.

I’d now like to offer you a way to truly become more efficient, productive, and profitable. You will find this particularly valuable if your business generates at least a $1 million in revenue per year, or if you, as an individual, make $60,000 or more per year.  My company, Fresh Juice Strategy offers what we call: The Personal Systems Boot Camp. The Time and Task Bootcamp is a significant time asset that will pay for itself over and over again.  Bootcamp clients drop 15 to 25% or more of their required working hours in 21 days.  How? In the Bootcamp, a Business Coach works with you on-site in your workspace. We guide you in crafting custom-fit, personal systems.  We monitor how you work, and then help you make subtle adjustments that help you uncover HOURS of lost time per week. Then we provide personalized follow-up for 21 Days. Why 21 Days? Because that’s the classic standard for creating a new habit. At Fresh Juice Strategy, our philosophy is not to give you a quick pick-me-up seminar where the results fade away in a week. We work with you One-to-One to help establish lasting change. Bootcamp clients gain significant amounts of time. They not only become more efficient and focused on their most profitable work, but their stress levels dropped like a rock.  Our Bootcamp clients no longer worry about the things that they have to do, because they have a personalize system that gives them control of their work environment, their time and their tasks.

Options for the Personal Systems Boot Camp range from $1000 to $1800. Based on our experience, Business Owners and CEO’s require a One and a half Day Boot Camp. The boot camp for Managers and other employees is one day. All Bootcamp options include personal 21-Day follow-up to ensure lasting habits are developed.

I should emphasize that the Bootcamp is not about organization (though increased organization is certainly a byproduct). The Personal Systems Bootcamp is about efficiency and profitability. It is about helping you reduce stress. It about developing personal systems that help you avoid paying time interest.

Remember: The amount of money you make will always be dependent upon your ability to focus your time and actions on your most profitable activities. That’s why we say that the Bootcamp is the fastest way to give yourself a raise.The typical return on investment, based on increased productivity alone, is usually well over 300% after 90 days.

If you would like to reserve a date for your Personal Systems Boot Camp, please call Fresh Juice Strategy at 1-87-SYSTEMS-8. 1-87-SYSTEMS-8. Thank you for listening. I hope you’ve found this training valuable, and I hope to have the opportunity to serve you in the near future.

Dave Crenshaw is a Business Coach and President of Fresh Juice Strategy. He began his coaching career in 1998 by becoming the youngest independent consultant, formerly for E-Myth Worldwide. He had already coached business owners several times his age before receiving his degree in Business Management-Entrepreneurship. The creator of the Fresh Juice Strategy program, Dave has coached and consulted business owners from London to Manila and from San Francisco to New York. He is the author of The Myth of Multitasking, available nationwide in hardcover in August '08 by Jossey-Bass (publishers of Patrick Lencioni's fables). You may contact Dave at Fresh Juice Strategy by clicking here.