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E-Myth – “Why most small businesses don’t work & what to do about it”

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Edmonton Business Coach | Does Multitasking Increase Productivity


One myth that many business owners have been led to believe is that multitasking is the key to maximum productivity says Edmonton business coach. In fact it takes on average 23 minutes for person to reach peak productivity once they have been interrupted. Since multitasking is a constant string of interruptions to work on a new task, multitasking actually is not the key to productivity. In fact, people who multitasking are actually reducing the productivity as well as reducing their intelligence while multitasking and producing poor results because of it. Instead of trying to multitask in the workplace, business owners should look at minimizing interruptions in their business in order to unlock the key to extreme productivity.

The first step to unlocking this potential is putting all staff on the same schedule. Once everyone is doing the same types of work at the same time, business owners can schedule instances of focused and solitary work. By scheduling and periods of time for business owner and their staff to work on tasks without interruption, they can minimize the amount of interruptions that happen during that period. In addition business coach says the key to this is being able to minimize all of the potential distractions and interruptions that may arise during that period of time. Business owners should figure out how to eliminate phone distractions during this time period, whether they have an answering service pickup phone calls, allow the phones go straight to voicemail and check messages after, phones can be one of the biggest interruptions and the day of the business, and minimizing that for the time period of focused work can help immensely.

Many business owners often fall into the bad habit of checking their email first thing in the morning and then all day long says Edmontons business coach, they should eliminate that at least for the period of time where they have focused work. Business owners should know that they can always check email afterwards, and that thereís nothing thatís so urgent is that people canít get along for a few hours without getting an answer. Not only should email canít be checked says Edmonton business coach, but all of the email notifications should be eliminated as well. All the notification sounds can be just as much as distraction.

Business owners will find that by having blocks of time every day where their staff as well as themselves are working without interruption will drastically increase the productivity in their business. Edmonton business coach says it may take some time getting used to working without the constant interruptions as it sometimes serves as an adrenaline rush. However when businesses realize how much time they can save much more productive their staff is it can be easy to get used to. One of the best side effects of this kind of extreme productivity in the workplace, is that they will find that with fewer interruptions only their staff but they will also be happier.

So many people have bought into this idea that the key to unlocking productivity within their business is through multitasking says Edmontons business coach. However people donít realize that by trying to do many things at the same time, they canít do anything well. In fact, Gary Keller was quoted as saying ìmultitasking is merely the opportunity to screw up more than one thing at a timeî. Itís very true, not only is multitasking not productive, it actually reduces productivity, as well as the execution rates of the tasks being worked upon. The reason for this says Edmonton business coach is because it takes a brain approximately 23 minutes to reach its maximum capacity and work at its potential capacity. Every distraction, and every time a person switches to a new task that happens forces the brain to start over in order to reach its maximum potential once more. Multitasking is essentially switching tasks often to work on any tasks at the same time. By doing this, people are never reaching the peak productivity of their brain. As a byproduct of not reaching the peak productivity, it reduces the ability to complete work well and studies have even shown that it reduces intelligence in the moment, forcing people who are multitasking to make bad decisions and poor work.

If business owners do something else to increase the productivity in their business then eliminating multitasking from their workplace, that will be an effective strategy says Edmonton business coach. However, business owners can actually unlock massive potential by learning how to create focused solitary work schedules for themselves and their staff to allow everybody to work for long enough period of time within their peak brain capacity to not only do extremely good work, but get even more of that done.

This concept was put to test by a realtor named Gary Keller, who was a big fan of solitary dedicated work. Realtors are often known as extreme multitaskers, and Gary wanted to build a real estate firm based on the concept of focused work. Not only did he starts a real estate firm based on these principles, his firm grew to be the largest in the world. So if a profession such as realtors can be even more effective by embracing the concept of solitary dedicated work, most likely will be able to work and be effective in any business setting says Edmontons business coach.

The key to creating focused solitary work environments for businesses, is setting a schedule and sticking to it says Edmonton business coach, and then eliminating all distractions during that time period. this means no email notifications, no phone calls, internal disruptions by staff. Once business owners get used to this system in their business, they will find out that not only can they get so much more work done then they had been before, but their staff will also be more happy because studies show that the fewer interruptions someone has in their day, the happier they are.