In this Sub-Chapter on reflection, and in the context of Leadership, I would like to explore multitasking.
Multitasking is defined as being able to do two or more tasks at the same time, rather than having to finish one task before we start another. I didn’t really hear the term multitasking until about ten years ago. I first heard it when people were describing differences between women and men – there are jokes about how women can multitask and men can’t.
I don’t think that I’m a great multitasker; I generally make mistakes unless I concentrate on one of them and leave the other till the first one is finished. I’m fairly good at mixing and matching tasks but not doing them at the same time.
It may well be true that women can multitask – but for the purposes of this Sub-Chapter, when I talk about incorporating reflection into leadership and decision making – because the majority of tasks involve decision-making – I am going to come down on the side of recommending that, for success in any venture which is of any importance at all, we need to do one thing at a time, and I believe that this is true whether we are male or female.
The reason I believe that we need to give decisions of importance our full attention is that when we decide on something, we need to use our unique human ability and intelligence to symbolise, and imagine what the result of our decision will be.
That is, how will the environment change after our decision, who will it affect, what consequences will there be for us and others, and our organisation.
Now I don’t propose that we do this for every routine tittle-tattle decision that we make every day – but this post is not really about those kinds of decisions.
I don’t believe that we can imagine outcomes, and the ramifications and implications of outcomes unless we can concentrate and allow time to reflect and stay-on-task. And I don’t believe that this is possible when we are constantly interrupted and being called away to do a different task.
If we were working on some task that required concentration, and someone was walking in our door every 30 seconds to tell us something, and then demand a response from us, we’d soon let him know that we were trying to focus and politely ask to give us some time alone.
But this is exactly what happens with emails, the internet in general, and in particular social media, as we are constantly interrupted by some message or notification or other, and as we fiddle with our smart-phone, (or whatever gadget is at hand) diverting our attention to a task that can’t wait even one hour.
And I believe that our unconscious has a way of tricking us into avoiding difficult decisions.
This is because concentration and reflection go hand in hand. When we are distracted I believe that we find it harder to think deeply, and, importantly, harder to stay with difficult questions which will undoubtedly come our way because we are in a leadership position.
A distraction, (or a thought that emerges because of a distraction) appears to be attractive at particular times of stress in decision making. We find a way of removing our attention from the unpleasant task to the task that distracts us, and offers us some gratification (or even, sometimes, entertainment).
Does this sound familiar to anyone?
I say all the above in the full knowledge that as we invent or develop something we seem to be able to adapt to it fairly quickly. Perhaps a younger generation will not be as affected by constant interruption as I or others in my generation, as they will have got used to it growing up and integrated distraction into their daily work.
Time will tell – it usually does!