In Praise of Single-Tasking

by Scott on April 28, 2007

37Signals’ blog made mention of a post about the counter-productivity of multi-tasking.

Scott [Berkun] brings up the latest research that casts multi-tasking in a counter-productive light. He ultimately suggests that if we want to achieve greatness that we should pay attention to how the great people who came before us paid attention—by blocking distractions out and focusing on the task at hand. Given all the focus on attention today on the web, this talk is timely.

Former micro-ISV owner turned Personal Development Coach for “Smart People” shared similar insight in Triple Your Personal Productivity.

The 4 Hour Workweek

Recently, John Jantsch wrote in his Duct Tape Marketing Blog about Tim Ferriss, lifestyle and productivity guru and author of 4 Hour Work Week book and blog. Tim is a huge proponent of single tasking. And it’s worked well for him. A self-described “professional polymath”, Tim has built a lifestyle around accomplishing a wide variety of interesting feats worldwide by single-tasking for top performance combined with “outsourcing” many aspects of his life.

Check out fourhourworkweek.com for some interesting insight, including two recent articles: one on the study of the distracting effects of e-mail and ringing phones compared to marijuana and another one on how to firewall out distractions.

John’s words: Tim is an engaging guide on the journey to design a life around your plans and dreams using work simply as a way to live passionately. ... Tim coaches you to go on an information diet – don’t just filter information, eliminate it.

In Praise of Single Tasking

As an experiment, I started forcing myself into strict single-tasking last week. Here’s what I found.

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