Multitasking Your Way to Trouble

In her March article in Student Lawyer, Work Habits That Can Become a Barrier to Professional Success, Mary Dunnewold writes about three habits that can seriously hinder your professional success as a lawyer: procrastination, multitasking, and distraction. Dunnewold states, “Multitasking and distraction feed each other and may exacerbate procrastination tendencies.” She advises trying Internet blocking software that can help you stay focused on the task at hand, instead of on updating your Facebook or Twitter status.  Back in February, we had the same idea and posted on social networking blocking tools in Get Productive! Ways to Limit Online Distractions.

TheInspiredSolo, a blog on productivity tips for lawyers, also posted about multitasking. The author points out that what we generally think of as multitasking is really something called switchtasking. Switchtasking is what our brain does when we attempt to multitask – it literally switches (albeit very quickly) between doing two tasks, like talking on the phone and writing an email. The end result: neither task gets the full attention it deserves.

A recommended book on multitasking is Dave Crenshaw’s The Myth of Multitasking: How Doing It All Gets Nothing Done. We have it available as an ebook. [Find it].