by Dave Crenshaw
Wiley
~ Review in Halifax Herald, March 2009
Helen is the Queen of multitasking. She expects her employees to be good multitaskers. She works hard, juggling emails, phone calls, interruptions and meetings, and yet, at the end of the day, feels like an underachiever. But Helen is a senior executive in a large retail clothing chain. She didn’t get there by underachieving. Her workday feels out of control and her time slips away, used up by ‘active’ and ‘passive’ interruptions. Helen hires a consultant to help her get a handle on things.
Dave Crenshaw has touched a nerve with his new book. He posits that multitasking is a myth, that in spite of our belief that multitasking makes us more productive, the reverse is actually true. The human brain, he says, is not capable of doing more than one activity at a time. What we are really doing, when we think we are multitasking, is ‘switchtasking’, switching rapidly back and forth between tasks, a process that results in lost time, lost productivity and frustrated workers. “The brain is a lot like a computer. You may have several screens open ... but you’re able to think about only one at a time.” Switchtasking, says Crenshaw, is neither effective nor efficient. It is, at best, counterproductive.
The Myth of Multitasking is an easy read. Crenshaw has written it as a dialogue between Helen and Phil, the consultant she hires. While this dialogue is sometimes stilted and simplistic, the device allows Crenshaw to make his point clearly and effectively. Unless we assume control over our technological workday, he says, and learn to manage interruptions effectively, we will “be run over by the traffic of information ... The reality is that these things will make us productive only if we learn to take control of them. They are the servants, we are the masters.”
Dave Crenshaw is a management expert who coaches and trains CEO’s and management teams worldwide.
