Masterful Mindsets

“Busyness is an illness of the spirit." ~Eugene Peterson

Last week I got on my soapbox about how multitasking or task switching, as it really is, doesn’t work and is just a lie we believe, which ends up sabotaging our productivity because it makes even the simplest tasks take longer to complete.

So now before we go on to the last concept that I’m going to cover for organizing your time for maximum efficiency (which I’ll talk about next week) I want to jump back on my soapbox and address a bigger issue. One that perhaps is the underlying cause of all this need to get more done.

You see, I believe that habits like multitasking are just a “symptom” of a bigger issue, which is that many people are simply busy being busy because they suffer from busyness sickness. When and if they do get caught up, they add more to their list and cause themselves to become even busier. Busyness sickness is often caused by being afraid of not being enough and failing because of it. But unfortunately, ...

“To do two things at once, is to do neither.” Publilius Syrus

To continue responding to the messages from my recent blog about how to organize your day for maximum efficiency, this week I’ll be talking about a statement I made that caused a bit of a stir with some people. I said that, multi-tasking does not work. (“Multitasking is a Lie.")

Of course, I had a couple of people tell me that they are great at multitasking. Which, I’m sure they are. But being good at something that isn’t a good thing… still doesn’t make for an effective practice. (It’s kind of like saying you’re good at drinking. Doesn’t mean getting drunk is good for you.) 😉

There is a common misconception that multitasking is a great way to get more done in a shorter period of time. Quite the contrary actually. Multitasking is really not as time efficient as you’d think. As a matter of fact, studies show that the time it takes you to complete tasks can increase up to 25% for even the littlest, simplest tasks. And ...