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Single Tasking
By Brick | January 16, 2008
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In a keynote speech to top CEO’s and government officials at the New New Internet Conference in Washington DC, 4-Hour Workweek author Timothy Ferriss makes the claim that people with the most time and the highest incomes are characterized by the ability to single task: focusing on the truly important, without interruption, to completion. Here is a nice, short, edited video from the session:
The entire keynote address can be viewed on the New New Internet Conference site.
Here is a truism: people do not truly multi-task. Multi-tasking, in my opinion, is usually used to describe switching continuously between multiple single tasks over a period of time. So why not just work on one task at a time to completion, one after another? If we really cannot parallel process, the overall duration of completing all of the tasks is the same whether we do one thing at a time or try to “multi-task”. If you believe, as many do, that there is a task-switching cost associated with any switch from one task to another, then multi-tasking actually takes more time than performing single tasks at a time to completion.
One could then say that they must start one task before completing another because of a deadline. I would agree that a deadline is a practical implication, but it suggests prioritizing work by deadline, not the need to multi-task! In fact, task switching costs suggests that by prioritizing work and single tasking, we have the best shot at meeting these deadlines.
By the way, we often think that computers multi-task. Strictly speaking, for single processor machines, that is not technically accurate. CPU’s work on a single task at a time, and multi-tasking is emulated by having some sort of task switching scheme built into hardware or operating system software. Just like humans, there can be a substantial performance penalty for a computer to task switch.
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Topics: 4-Hour Work Week, Organization, Videos |
January 16th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
This is one of the best things to take away from The 4 Hour Work Week, the idea of single tasking.
February 4th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
Yes - I’m starting to believe that single tasking is the only way to get to a reduced work week. Drive towards minimalism, and you’ll be successful.
February 6th, 2008 at 7:48 am
[…] Focus: Focus on one thing (reminds me of single-tasking). […]