Chasing The M-Myth

I had a really compelling dinner conversation tonight with Jim Pelley, Karl Palachuk and Jeff Marmins (each a genius in his own right, in my humble opinion).  One of the things we all agreed on, and the inspiration for this post, was what I’m going to start calling the M-Myth (if Michael Gerber is reading this, I hope he’ll remember that imitation is the sincerest kind of flattery).

The M-Myth was born in the Information Age, and it’s been plaguing business professionals and entrepreneurs for decades.  It’s destroyed careers and businesses, occasionally even lives.  What is the M-Myth?  It’s the myth of multi-tasking.

Some people claim to have this ability, even wearing it as a badge of honor.  They strut around with a misguided superiority complex, thinking that their ability to multi-task somehow puts them in the intellectual elite, with a brain so powerful, one task just isn’t enough!  Well, here’s the bad news: multi-tasking is impossible! At least, that is, for humans.  Computers can almost pull it off, but even they (as Karl points out in his book Relax, Focus, Succeed) have to chunk the separate tasks down into steps that get done one at a time; it just looks like multi-tasking because they do it really, really fast.

Jeff highlighted the impossibility of multi-tasking by using the simplest example: having a cup of coffee while doing some kind of work, let’s say writing a blog post.  Some would consider this multi-tasking in its most basic form, but think about it for a minute.  What’s really going on?  Am I really doing two things simultaneously?  No.  In order to take a sip of my coffee, what do I have to do?  That’s right: I have to stop writing my blog.  Makes it pretty clear, doesn’t it?  We really can only do one thing at a time.  Multi-tasking is a myth, and a dangerous one at that.  How so?

Think about what happens when you try to multi-task at work.  For example, what happens when you are talking to a customer on the phone while reading an email from a coworker?  Are you able to do either task justice?  No.  All you’re really doing is creating distraction and lowering the quality of performance on both tasks, and your work suffers as a result.

How about at home?  How well does it work to listen to your spouse talk about their day while reading the newspaper?  Not well at all.

So rather than perpetuate the M-Myth, why not do what successful people everywhere have learned to do: focus on one task at a time, do it really well, then move on to the next, giving each your full attention.  Developing this ability to focus is one of the greatest tools in your professional arsenal.  Don’t neglect it in pursuit of the M-Myth.