It about drives us crazy when we hear people make the excuse of not doing something critical to their own success or the organization’s success because they were doing something else. It seems as though the simple art of multitasking has disappeared. Or maybe excuse making and laziness has just reared its ugly head again. Are you falling into this trap of not being able to complete more than one task at a time or focus on more than one project?
Here are some examples we’ve seen in just the last few weeks… “I couldn’t fix the computer problem for an employee (a 15 minute fix) because I was too busy.” Really? Couldn’t find 15 minutes out of at least 40 hours in week? Here’s another… “I couldn’t make those prospecting calls because we were working on another issue or project this past week.” Really? No time for even 3 or 5 or 10 calls that would last 5 minutes each? One last example… “I didn’t do well on the phone shop because we were so busy that day” Really? Couldn’t gather your thoughts and focus for just 2 minutes?
Multitasking is not checking your blackberry or iphone for messages during a meeting. That’s just plain rude. Multitasking is being able to accomplish a few goals or complete a few different projects over the course of a day or week or month. Those that can’t do this are either very disorganized or just a little lazy. Questions for the day… Have you started a project lately that seemed important but for some reason it has been tabled or forgotten about because a new project came along? What happened to the other project? Are you not walking forward because you’re now chewing gum? Think about it… it’s ok to do both.
