Posted on August 10, 2015
The Modern Work Environment
Are you frantically jumping from email to email putting out spot fires, doing a thousand tasks, and then at the end of the week, wondering what it is that you actually achieved? I could tell you that you have no choice and that it’s just the job that demands that kind of response, but in most cases you could be getting a lot more done! The typical modern work environment is ‘hyperkinetic’ which means it is hectic and time pressured. Hyperkinetic environments have been found to cause:
- Attention deficit
- Black and white thinking
- Difficulty staying organized
- A constant low level of panic or guilt
Multitasking
Our modern work environments are conducive to poor thinking, poor time management and poor outcomes. One of the most damaging beliefs in the modern workplace is the concept of multitasking. As it turns out, multitasking is a complete misnomer!
Regardless of gender, for the human being there is no such thing as multitasking!
When someone thinks they are multitasking, what they are actually doing is ‘attention switching’ i.e. switching between one task and another very quickly. Some of us can do this ‘switching’ better than others, but this switching causes all of us to miss crucial chunks of information. When you do this attention switching, you are far less productive than we would otherwise be. A research study by Hewlett Packard found that
“workers distracted by e-mail and phone calls suffer a fall in IQ more than twice that found in marijuana smokers”.
If you are the person saying “my job demands that I do many tasks at once…” it is YOU who I am talking to. STOP MULTITASKING!! Regardless of your job description, there are many practical ways that you can improve your attention and productivity.
What makes humans so great is our capacity for concentrating on one task at a time with an intensity and focus required for complex thinking. It takes time to become fully engaged into an activity, so if we keep getting distracted and quickly changing the task that we are doing, we are robbing ourselves of productivity. We may be making a lot of noise and feeling busy, but the truth is that we are not getting much done!
Ways to improve your focus:
- Allocate certain times during the day when you check emails, and ONLY CHECK EMAILS DURING THOSE TIMES!
- Turn any computer or digital alerts off.
- Allocate certain times for responding to or making phone calls.
- Turn your mobile phone off! (yes this can actually happen!).
- Learn how to say “no, I can’t do that right now” to others and yourself.
- Use a digital timer to give yourself solid uninterrupted spans of concentration
To top it off, not only are we more productive, but we are actually happier when we can maintain focus and engagement in our activities. There’s no such thing as time management – only self management! Give yourself permission to have clean focus, protect the time you have, and get more things done!