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Modern Multitasking Men September 2, 2010

Modern Multitasking Men

In today’s fast-paced world, it may seem impossible to only focus on one thing at a time. You answer a phone call while in discussions with your team and also simultaneously respond to email queries! With mobile hand phone the fashion of multitasking has become more wide spread. You run down a lift and find 10 different people speaking on ten different subjects to ten different receivers! Multitasking isn’t it? Multitasking is a much revered skill at the workplace today.

The question is – how do we define multitasking? Does it mean doing several things at the same time? Is it the eureka of time management that we have discovered off late? Does it entail juggling several jobs or assignments? Does it mean having diverse skills and making optimum use of them?

Managers in this corporate world are supposed to learn multitasking else there growth gets restricted. Gone are the days of specialists working & focusing only on one job at a time. Today only researchers and scientists do so, rest of the world is compelled to multitask to survive. Attempts to multitask can be honed and polished into a fine skill by some and could just backfire with others.

The best & the most productive example of multitasking ever observed is that of a mother & a housewife. Just visualize her role in the household every morning. Husband has to go on work while kids have to go to school. If there are elders at home, they have their set of needs and demands coinciding at the same time.

This lady cooks food & prepares breakfast for husband and kids simultaneously, she listens to some music and simultaneously helps the children arrange their school bags and other necessities, in the meanwhile if there is any vendor on the front door say the milk man or the laundry guy, she responds to them as well… All this she does while maintaining a magical equipoise! Not that multitasking is supposed to be only for women but I feel it comes more handy for her to do so!

Effective multitasking :

1. I feel that Multitasking can actually be a fruitful tool only when the work does not demand constant observation & when the information needs to flow fast. Answering a phone call or responding to email while you’re working on something else can be important, especially if the information sought by the other party is critical in nature.
2. Multitasking comes handy when you are doing a routine job. You have gained thorough expertise to perform even with the lowest of your concentration. Example you are running some automated machine where the instructions are preset, you can aswell venture into any additional job role simultaneously.
3. Multitasking can also be a useful strategy when you get stuck. Sometimes it can be useful to focus on a difficult task. But when you reach a roadblock, it can be equally valuable to walk away and do something else while your mind ponders the issue. When you return to the task with fresh focus, you’re more likely to be able to get along.

However there are a few example of wrong application of this concept of multitasking :

• Once I observed a physician ( a doctor) while he had glued the stethoscope on the poor patients heart , he was actually finalizing a deal over phone simultaneously!
• Students while studying put on the radio or their Ipod, yes the sms factory keeps working seamlessly
• We can see people in engrossed communications while driving a car or a two wheeler
• Offering Puja to God while your eyes are on the newspaper or the cooker on the stove in the kitchen!
• A cashier counting notes with eyes on the television screen in front of him.
• A gentle man takes his laptop to fresh room while potty time! Oops multitasking at its worst!

Friends like very good habit, multitasking could as well be fruitful provided you execute it tactfully. Honesty this is the key to doing more than one thing and being present in more than one place at the same time. It is YOU who has to make the decision & the choice to set simultaneously into action!

Ajit Varwandkar
Author is Managing Director FS Management (I) Pvt. Ltd.
Can be contacted on info@fsindia.in