It’s true: humans can’t multitask. As Jerry may have said (and if not, I’m saying it), it’s a fact, not an opinion; accept it and get over it.

You can’t multitask. But you can still do more than one thing at a time.

Remember the guy on Ed Sullivan who, um, right; you have no clue who Ed Sullivan was. Anyway, there was this thing called a ‘variety show’ on something called ‘television’ with ‘entertainers’ who, y’know, did stuff.

There was always some guy who’d come out with a bunch of six foot tall sticks on stands. Skinny sticks, maybe half an inch thick. He’d set a china plate on top of one, start it spinning, then keep it spinning with the stick. It’s a cool trick, and not as hard as it looks. Do not discuss this subject with my mother; it seems to upset her.

Anyway, once the first plate was spinning, he’d start another. Get it spinning, check the first one to be sure it was spinning well, and start a third. Check the first two, and start a fourth.

Eventually, he had a lot of plates spinning. A lot.

So, here’s the thing: how many plates do you think he touched at the same time?

One.

If he started grabbing two of the sticks to get the plates spinning, he couldn’t possiblly look at two plates at the same time. One or the other was dust.

He could prepare by putting his hand on the next stick, so that the instant his eyes moved to that plate he was ready to spin, but it was always one at a time, one at a time.

Here’s a dirty secret the computer geeks don’t want you to know: computers don’t actually multitask, either. Nuh uh. Not really. The unitask, one task at a time, jumping from one spinning plate to another so fast that it appears to be working on all of them simultaneously.

Now, that, you can do.

Get a plate spinning. Once you know that process or project is moving, and doesn’t need your immediate attention (whether it’s because it’s waiting on input from someone else, or because others have been trained to manage the next step) move on to the next project. Keep monitoring each project, but have systems in place that let the plates spin with their own momentum without needing your attention every single moment. (Yeah, this means you have to let go of control. One more thing to get over.)

You cannot safely drive and talk on the phone. You cannot listen to the client on the phone while reading email. You can’t work on business while spending time with your significant other or the kids.

But you can spin a whole lotta plates all at once, because plates have momentum.

Joel D Canfield is a Business Heretic and author of The Commonsense Entrepreneur, one of the 5 best business books Jerry has ever read.

Wow…what an incredible day.  I’m still in Nashville attending the Robin Robins IT Marketing Bootcamp, and I have to say that today was a game changer for me.  Mostly, the presenters just made a lot of sense: everything they said was stuff I know and talk about, but it really sunk in on a deeper level for me.

Me and Dave Crenshaw, author of The Myth of Multitasking

The day kicked off with Dave Crenshaw, author of “The Myth of Multitasking”.  Dave talked about the negative impact the myth of multitasking has had on our society, a familiar subject to regular readers of this blog (see the blog post “The M-Myth” and the podcast “The Myth of Multitasking”).  Dave’s insights into the workings of the human brain were fascinating, and it was great to learn that there is hope even for a mess like me.

Dave divides people into three categories: the Zen Master (you know the ones: always on time and organized to a sickening degree), the Prodigal (those who were organized at one time but have fallen into a pattern of disorder) and the Pig-Pens (people like me and Dave who are inherently chaotic and disorganized).  Each deals with the chaos of life in their own way, but all of us have the same problem: only 24 hours in the day.

The biggest take-away from Dave’s talk was the costs associated with multitasking (which Dave calls “switch-tasking”): an increase in the amount of time it takes to perform tasks, a decrease in the quality of the completed task, an increase in the amount of stress on the part of the person attempting to multi-task, and a negative effect on our relationships with others.  Considering the heavy cost, maybe we should all take a second look at whether multitasking is an effective strategy in our businesses.

Me and Alex Rogers, founder of Chartec and creator of TaaS

The next highlight of the day was a breakout session with Chartec CEO and founder Alex Rogers.  Not only is Alex a blast to watch (he’s got the intensity of Gary V. and the wit of Mark Twain), he’s one savvy IT dude.

Alex focused on the importance of being different, which seems to be a recurring theme throughout this seminar.  He said that trying to get by with offering competitive pricing and great service is lame; every one of your competitors is doing the same thing.  Alex challenged the audience to start thinking about what they can offer that is radically different from the pack.  Then and only then will you be able to dominate your market.

My favorite line out of Alex’s talk is one I’ve said on many occasions in the past: if you can find out what your customers really want to buy, you’ll never have to sell to them again.  Forget all the lame “closing” techniques you learned in that “How To Be a Douchebag Salesman” class; they don’t work anymore.  Instead, learn how to become a trusted partner to your clients.  You’ll be surprised at how much easier your life gets.

Me and Robin and Mr. T

Lastly, Robin Robins herself graced the stage and shared her “& Secrets to Become a 7 Figure Consultant”.  The information was amazing, and Robin’s story hit me hard.  She shared how she was able to break out of her past programming to become an incredibly successful marketing guru.  The message really hit home for me as I’ve been working through  some very similar issues.  Her transparency and honesty was very moving.

Robin was true to her talk’s title; she shared all her secrets for creating a wildly profitable information marketing business.  More importantly, though, she helped us to appreciate the need to put the customer first in everything we do.  Whether it’s creating a new product or launching a new marketing campaign, build it for your best customers and they’ll love you for it.

I’m really not doing justice to Robin’s presentation here, but it’s almost 2 AM local time and pushing midnight according to my internal clock, so you’ll forgive me.  Suffice it to say that Robin is a marketing genius, and I’m a changed man.

More from Nashville tomorrow, but I’ll leave you with this final thought: if you can find the intersection between what you’re good at and what you really love to do, you’ll never be anything less than happy and your life will be filled with abundance beyond your dreams.  Keep looking for that crossroads and when you find it, stake your claim and make your fortune!

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.