We must ask ourselves about the need to say yes to everything that comes our way, the distractions of our phones, and the need to constantly multitask. We simply cannot do everything, and do it well. This particular combination of challenges is killing our productivity and the stress it creates is killing us. We never just sit, do one thing and get it done. We can’t stay away from our phone for 10 minutes, constantly checking it, swiping (the average is over 2,000 times daily), and feeling the need to answer every text that pings us.
There is a gift in shutting off our phone, singletasking (being able to actually do a task from its inception to completion), and learning to say no. While we can’t always say no to a request from our boss, or singletask long projects, we can “cull the herd” of what we continually say yes to, so we can actually get things done. The constant distraction of going from one thing to another every 15 minutes, being addicted to our phones, and feeling we must say yes to every request, is resulting in shoddy work, undue stress, and feeds our phone obsession.
Try shutting off your phone for a few hours and concentrating on the task at hand, or even better yet, your self-care time or your family! Set time appropriately to get shorter term items done, so they aren’t nagging you in your head, and don’t require revisiting several times.
Lastly, just because someone asks you to do something doesn’t mean you always have to volunteer, must be at every single thing your child does (yes, I said it), and there are times you can push back on work that is given to you at the office. Certainly, we want to provide a set of cogent points as to why we may not be the best person to complete a given task that our boss just request we perform. However, when we have 10 other tasks that are ahead of it (and the boss already gave you those 10 items, replete with expectations as to completion) you can only do so much.
#singletasking #multitasking #quality #shinyobjectsyndrome #valueadded