Multi-Tasking – Should You or Shouldn’t You?

I have always been very proud of being a multi-tasker. I always felt it was a great strength.

But what I’m beginning to learn is that if I’m checking my emails while I’m attending a teleseminar (I had to put this in as I’ve done it) while I’m answering the phone while I’m blogging, where is my attention? Is it dedicated? No, it’s split between many things. So how can I say I gave my full attention to the teleseminar? How can I say I gave my full attention to the person on the phone (maybe a client)? How can I say I fully understood what I read in my emails? How can I say I fully explained myself in my blog? How can I say I gave 110% when I’m actually splitting it between everything else going on?

I won’t say we can’t be effective as multi-taskers. But I will say that I don’t believe we can be as effective as we would be if we had spent that same energy and focus and direction on one thing.

Yes, I still love the variety of doing different projects and I probably would choose to work on many different things, but only one at a time. I’m devoting my whole self to one project during that timeframe so I don’t feel that’s multi-tasking. If I can condition myself to do that with client projects, I need to condition myself to do that in the other areas of my business.

In order to be successful, we need to take time to sit and think and plan and assess. Otherwise, how do we know where we’re going? How do we know how our business is progressing? But in order to see the big picture and really do it justice, we must concentrate only on that.

So I’m going to work on this. I just got a book on marketing in the mail. My goal is to begin reading it. I won’t check my emails, I won’t check the forums, I won’t talk on the phone, I won’t blog.

By the way, I’ve got a great dish cooking in the oven and my load of laundry is almost done.

Are you  a multi-tasker? Is it keeping your business from growing as it should? Offload some of those tasks to me, your virtual assistant. I can help keep you organized, keep you up-to-date on where you need to be, help you with your blogging, get that marketing campaign going, keep up with your correspondence and set up your autoresponders for your new eZine. Check out my web site at Elite VAs for more information.

Vickie