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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 | The Misconception Of Multitasking


Many people assume the key to extreme productivity is through multitasking says Edmonton business coach. However although this is a widely held belief, especially in business, it is not true. People think that it takes them more productive, but instead of making as more productive it actually access less productive. The reason for this is it takes the average person 23 minutes to reach their intellectual capacity. Every interruption they get they have two take another 23 minutes getting back to their peak productivity. Multitasking basically assures that peak productivity is never reached. Not only does multitasking make sure that people are not working in their best range, it also reduces their ability to work effectively on the tasks and it also reduces their intelligence. Even people who can agree that multitasking isnít great but think that they are better at it actually are the people who do the worst at it. The science behind multitasking says that everybody is bad at it and it should be avoided.

Eliminating multitasking from a business may be difficult because it is such a common business practice says Edmonton business coach, however business owners can take very simple steps towards eliminating multitasking from their business and creating an environment that encourages extreme productivity. The first thing that business owners can do in order to create an environment for productivity is by creating schedules. They should schedule not only their own time, but they should schedule all of the staff time as well. The reason for that is so that everyone can be on the same tasks at the same time. Since it takes people 23 minutes to get onto their peak productivity, having time scheduled for everybody to be unfocused solitary work at the same time can eliminate interruptions internally.

When the entire office is on same solitary work at the same time, the next thing that a business owner should do is remove the external interruptions. By ensuring businesses donít get interrupted during this important time, a business owner can ensure that not only their staff but themselves work in their peak productivity zone. One of those interruptions is email. While it may be a hard concept for business owners to accept says Edmonton business coach, itís very important that business owners donít fall into the trap of looking at their email every time they get a notification. There will always be time to read and respond to emails later, business owners should avoid the temptation to check email when they should be working on the most important tasks in their business.

Another interruptions business owners can eliminate during this focused work time is phone calls. But either having phone calls go straight to voicemail, or by having one person whose job it is to answer the phones and deal with all the messages, business owners can ensure that their staff as well as the donít get their productivity interrupted. These are just a few things that can help businesses eliminate interruptions says Edmonton businesses coach and learn how to the even more productive than they ever thought they could be.

Many entrepreneurs believe the key to getting a lot accomplished in their business is to be doing many things at the same time says Edmonton business coach. Although multitasking is extremely prevalent especially in businesses, by doing many things at once doesnít mean you can accomplish anything faster. In fact, Gary Keller said ìmultitasking is merely the opportunity to screw up more than one thing at a timeî. And there is science that proves that this is actually true. Instead of increasing productivity, multitasking actually reduces productivity, making it worse than if someone was focusing on one task at a time. It also ensures that the work that is being done is done more poorly, and can even reduce the intelligence of the person multitasking as they are working on it. Since multitasking is so terrible for businesses and productivity, why so many businesses still work in this model is unknown.

So many businesses have been multitasking for so long that the canít even conceive of how they would function by eliminating it. Edmonton business coach says it is absolutely possible to eliminate multitasking in virtually any business. Business owners just needs to put some simple systems in place and then be vigilant that they adhere to those systems at all times. The first system that can help businesses avoid multitasking and increase their productivity is time blocking. Business owners should create a time block schedule where they write out in advance all of the tasks that they need to work on to achieve their strategic priorities. In this time block, business owners can dedicate certain blocks of time to being uninterrupted time. These blocks of time where business owner works uninterrupted should be when they are working on the most important tasks they need to focus on to grow their business. Working on their strategic priorities, increasing productivity in their business as well as marketing are all great examples of times that business owners should be uninterrupted.

Once a business owner has created a time block schedule for themselves, Edmonton business coach says the next thing that they should do is create a similar schedule for their entire office. By creating blocks of time that not only the business owner but the rest of the staff are to work uninterrupted, can encourage everybody to dedicate that time unfocused solitary uninterrupted work. By getting everybody into the habit of working uninterrupted will eliminate the instances of internal interruptions. This will encourage not only a business owner to reach their peak productivity and get their best and most productive work done, but also will do the same thing for their staff. By using this time blocking, business owners can ensure that their staff gets more work done then they ever were before and that the quality of the work will go up.