{"id":20418,"date":"2009-02-09T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-09T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/global2020prd.wpengine.com\/insights\/multitasking-being-bad-at-several-things-at-the-same-time\/"},"modified":"2020-03-21T08:35:23","modified_gmt":"2020-03-21T08:35:23","slug":"multitasking-being-bad-at-several-things-at-the-same-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.global-integration.com\/insights\/multitasking-being-bad-at-several-things-at-the-same-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Multitasking – being bad at several things at the same time"},"content":{"rendered":"

As regular readers will know I am no fan of multi-tasking.\u00a0 I think it is a word we created to make us feel good about being disorganised.\u00a0 You can see previous posts on constant interruptions<\/a> here.<\/p>\n

But here is another reason that multitasking can be bad for your effectiveness.\u00a0 I have been reading a book called \u201cYes, 50 Secrets from the Science of Persuasion\u201d<\/em> by Noel Goldstein, Steve Martin and Robert Cialdini.<\/p>\n

It is a very accessible, 250 page, run through the research based findings from studies of persuasion.<\/p>\n

One of the things that they discovered in the research, was that sleep deprivation or fatigue, which for those of us working in complex companies and travelling a lot is a real challenge in itself, but the second was that you can get a similar effect simply by generating a short distraction.<\/p>\n

So for example, sales people who did something unexpected like quoting the price of a product in pennies, and then saying \u201cit\u2019s a bargain\u201d were more persuasive. That slight distraction of \u201cit\u2019s in pennies\u201d rather than the normally expected pricing, just knocks people off track a little bit and the persuasive statement that immediately follows is more likely to b accepted.<\/p>\n

These were relatively small scale transactions, but one of the recommendations was that if you are involved in something that is fairly high stakes, if you are making a decision, or \u00a0trying to focus on something important, minimise multitasking.<\/p>\n

This is also common sense.\u00a0 When did you ever do your best work by not concentrating on it?<\/p>\n

So again, multitasking, it is a nice word but it doesn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Multitasking – being bad at several things at the same time: it is a nice word but it doesn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-20418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","type-blog"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nMultitasking - being bad at several things at the same time - Global Integration<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Multitasking - being bad at several things at the same time: it is a nice word but it doesn\u2019t work.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.global-integration.com\/insights\/multitasking-being-bad-at-several-things-at-the-same-time\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Multitasking - 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