Unravelling The Myths of Multitasking and Time Management – Part 3

In the first two parts of this series, we saw that multitasking and time management are far from being realistic or effective approaches to managing our ever-busy lives.  This leaves us with the question of what should we be doing instead.  The answer comes down to two inter-related concepts that I’ll discuss in the concluding part to this series – focus and setting goals.

The key to climbing the mountain

A few weeks ago, I watched a documentary that followed a group of mountain climbers who were attempting to climb Mount Everest.  Thanks to a number of technological advances, the first two-thirds of the ascent were not as daunting as it was decades earlier.  However, the final leg of the climb still presented the same challenges and dangers as it did when people first started climbing this mountain over fifty years ago.  Climbing up that final leg, the team was hit by winds far stronger than they had anticipated, making their climb much more strenuous and leaving them with even less of their precious oxygen supply for the return descent.

Despite this unexpected challenge, the climbers pushed ahead, not only reaching the summit of Mount Everest, but also safely returning back to their base camp.  When asked why they pressed ahead in spite of the conditions, one climber remarked that they couldn’t get distracted by such things as an unexpected wind storm; that the key to surviving Everest depends on your ability to pay attention to what you can control, like breathing and pacing your climb.  While this answered the interviewer’s question, it also brings to light how important keeping their focus on reaching their goal was to their success on climbing Mount Everest.

There are, of course, other examples that demonstrate the importance of maintaining focus in order achieve a successful outcome.  The success of Apple in recent years is obviously due to their consistent focus on creating innovative new technologies like the iPod and iPhone and not being distracted by the product releases from their competition.  Michael Phelps’ success in winning eight gold medals at the Beijing Olympics was a result of his ability to maintain his focus on winning each competition instead of being distracted by his new-found fame.  There’s something else that we can learn from all of these examples and that is, unlike time, our focus is something that we can manage and control.

Granted, time was certainly an issue in regards to how long it took the climbers to reach the summit and head back, in how long it took Apple to get the iPhone out into the market, and how long it took Michael Phelps to complete his races.  But in each of these cases, it was never a question of managing time or tasks on a To-Do list as it was maintaining their focus on whatever goal they had set out to reach.  Without question, we all have the ability to harness our focus much in the same way as those seen in these examples; the only variable that needs to be considered is how easily we allow ourselves to be distracted by activities or tasks that take our attention away from our intended goal.  But once we are able to turn our attention away from the distractions we face each day, how do we go about managing this new found focus?

A lesson learned from making a spaghetti dinner

As we saw in the examples above, our focus should not be directed to a To-Do list of tasks, but instead to a specific goal or set of goals of what we want to accomplish.  To illustrate what this means, let’s use this hypothetical scenario of making a spaghetti dish for a dinner party.

To start off, I need to write a grocery list of the items I need to buy to make this meal.  To create this dish, I want to use whole wheat spaghetti noodles, a few tomatoes, some fresh basil and Parmesan cheese (for the sake of simplicity, let’s assume I already have the rest of the ingredients).  When I arrive at the grocery store, I find the tomatoes and Parmesan cheese easily enough.  However, there was no whole wheat spaghetti noodles and no fresh basil.  Since I couldn’t find whole wheat noodles and fresh basil, should I change my menu plans since I won’t be able to get all the ingredients I wanted?  Obviously not, since all I needed to do was adjust my recipe so that the whole wheat noodles were replaced with the regular semolina ones and dried basil leaves were used in place of fresh ones.  After all, the goal here is not to find all the ingredients I wrote on my grocery list, but instead to prepare a nice spaghetti meal for my dinner guests.  By keeping my focus on creating this meal – and not on what ingredients I was going to use – I was able to adapt my list to get the items I needed to prepare this meal so that when my dinner guests arrived, I completed my objective in having an inviting dish that I could serve to them.

Obviously, in this example, the grocery list stands in for the typical To-Do list many of us resort to in helping us manage all the different tasks we need to complete.  And yet, by keeping my focus on what my goal was – instead of noting how many tasks I could write off my list – I was able to adapt my plan to account for any unforeseen problems that may arise to ensure I reached my goal, much in the same way those mountain climbers compensated for the sudden wind storm they encountered during their ascent.  Had I focused instead on making sure I was able to complete all the tasks – in this case, getting all the ingredients I had written down – I would’ve assumed that my goal was out of reach since I couldn’t complete everything on my list.  From this spaghetti dinner example, we can see that To-Do lists should really be used more as guides for reaching our goals, that we must make them adjustable to compensate for any unforeseen events or circumstances, and that we should focus more on the goals we set out to accomplish instead of how many tasks we complete.

Over the course of this series on multitasking and time management, we’ve come to realize the reality that humans are not meant to manage multiple streams of information, as well as the absurdity of thinking we can somehow direct the flow of time.  By looking at those around us who have succeeded in reaching their objectives, we can appreciate that what we should be doing is managing how much of our focus is directed at achieving our goals, as opposed to dealing with the daily distractions we encounter on a regular basis.  Perhaps now that we have this understanding that it’s more important that we focus on reaching our goals than simply seeking to strike off tasks from our never-ending To-Do lists, we might create more opportunities for accomplishment and success, if not a greater sense of satisfaction in how we manage our lives.

Some other posts you may enjoy:

1. Unravelling The Myths of Multitasking and Time Management – Part 2
2. Unravelling The Myths of Multitasking and Time Management – Part 1
3. How to Make Procrastination Beneficial For Your Business
4. How to Deal with Procrastination
5. 4 Questions To Help You Figure Out If It’s Time To Move On
6. BSG “Daybreak, Part 2” – My Final BSG Review, Part 2

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