Over the past few weeks, one idea has surfaced again and again through podcasts, books, and articles I’ve read:

Multi-tasking (or having multiple priorities) is the key to failure. To succeed, you must identify one thing that takes precedence and accept mediocrity at everything else, so the prevailing wisdom goes.

This message has come up several times over the past few weeks from reading The ONE Thing by Gary Keller to a discussion with Angel List founder Naval Ravikant on the Spartan Up! podcast to an interview I listened to with Greg McKeown, author of Essentialism. I think it’s worth separating out what I see as two different types of multi-tasking:

1. Trying to do two different tasks at the same moment in time (like trying to watch TV and also listen to your friend tell a story).
2. The multi-tasking we all do on a daily basis as we juggle the various roles we all play (team member, writer, husband, mother, father, etc).

It’s well documented that the former variation doesn’t work. You’ll get a much better return on investment by single-tasking – devoting all of your energy to one task at a time. Read Deep Work if you’re not convinced. The second variation – juggling the many roles we all play on a daily basis – is where I tend to disagree with the prevailing wisdom. [Read more…]