Time+Mastery+step+3.png

Self Mastery of Your Schedule Step 3 of 11: The Myth of Multitasking Stories

In our last self mastery blog, we talked about how multitasking is more of a hindrance than a help. This time, we will go over an example of how it affects your work. Here’s a story from one of our coaches that shows how multitasking can hurt your productivity:

“One of the first clients I had years ago owns an auto repair shop. He wasn't productive. The client said, "I don't have any time in my day."

I responded, "Okay, let's do a time study. Let's see what's going on in your day." The client went through the time tracker.

WHAT THE TIME TRACKER REVEALED

This is what we found his days to be like: he would settle into his office and begin work, then, a mechanic would come in, throw some keys on the desk and say, "Here, I got a test drive for you."

He would fumble around, stop what he was doing, grab the keys, and head out for a test drive. He would come back ten minutes later, sit back down, and spend the next five minutes trying to figure out where he left off before having been interrupted by the test drive. Finally, he’s back in the zone of working.

Again, he’s working for roughly 10 minutes, another mechanic would come in and throw keys on the desk, "I got a test drive for you."

He would fumble around, stop what he was doing, grab the keys, and head out for a test drive. He would come back ten minutes later, sit back down, and spend the next five minutes trying to figure out where he left off before having been interrupted by, yet, another test drive. That typically happened two to three times every hour.

Do you see where this is going?

business-coaching-minneapolis-multitasking-schedule.jpg

Where was he productive? During the test drive and the 10 minutes where he was actually working.

Where was he unproductive? Stopping the momentum of his work and trying to remember later where he quit his interrupted task and where he needed to pick it back up. Those time breaks of stopping and starting are where he was not productive. Because we did the time study, we found it was almost 35 minutes an hour where he was unproductive.

COMMUNICATION AND COMMITMENT

We recognized two things: he had to commit to specific times of the day for test drives AND he had to communicate to his team what those times would be and WHY this decision was being made. A system was now created and implemented around the task of test drives.

This created two extra hours in his day because we simply did:

  • A time study

  • Figured out if he needed to Do, Delete, Defer, or Delegate the task. In this case, it was “do” so we blocked off increments of time on his calendar.

  • He communicated to his team the new process for test drives.

This was the beginning of our client becoming more efficient.”

Learn more about how you can be a master of your schedule by contacting us or tuning into our blogs.

When you’re looking for help where help cannot be found, contact us. We would love to help!