I’ve said this before–so often in fact that I cringe when I hear these words come out of my yap yet again– but I love my job. I learn so much from my clients. I suppose it can’t be helped, what with me being up to my eyebrows in multiple versions of their manuscripts. This week, I found myself reading this segment by fighter pilot extraordinaire, Jeff Orr, as he addresses our proclivity to try to get more shit done by multi-tasking. Tell me you don’t see yourself!

The ever-increasing capabilities of communication devices give us an inflated sense of our own capabilities as humans.  They make us feel powerful, as if anything is possible.  You might own a device smaller than a deck of playing cards that can access the sum total of human knowledge and communicate with satellites in outer space, but it doesn’t make you more efficient in the use of your “free” time.  I put the word “free” in quotes because simply declaring that time while driving as free in no way makes it actually free.  Driving time is not discretionary.  In order to be safe while driving, you must fully engage with that single cognitive task until it’s completed.  Treating it like a peripheral chore while you pile others on top of it is a recipe for disaster; just ask the insurance companies.

Modern communication technology produces the same multitasking siren’s song at work as it does in the car.  When the information is coming at you fast and furious—phone calls, e-mails, texts, tweets and more—multitasking seems to be a perfectly reasonable way to go about taking care of it all, especially if you fancy yourself a “good” multitasker, and honestly, just about everyone considers themselves a good multitasker.  For a good multitasker, it’s a badge of honor to juggle a half dozen different tasks at one time.  It’s efficient!  Instead of focusing on one thing for an hour, you’re spending that hour working on SIX things.  Just look at the cyclone of work that’s happening at that desk!

You don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to discern the problem with this attitude.   If switching between two tasks (talking on the phone and e-mailing or using a smart phone and driving) creates an energy-consuming, inefficient (and in the driving case, dangerous) task switching nightmare, how disastrous would it be to switch among a half dozen different tasks?

If you frequently find yourself in any or all of the following situations, you may be a multitasker who isn’t nearly as “good” as she thinks she is:

1.  You’re always busy, but you don’t ever seem to finish any one thing completely

2.  You frequently find yourself scrambling to “put out fires”

3.  You drop everything you’re doing in order to complete a  task based on a phone call or message so often that knee-jerking could be described as your standard operating procedure

4.  You “just don’t have time” to go to the gym/prepare a meal/spend time with loved ones

5.  Work fills up your late nights, weekends, and holidays

6.  You don’t ever feel content and focused because you’re always worried about a task you might be forgetting

The six scenarios above don’t take into account the worst part about falling into the multitasking trap.  The worst part? You create for yourself a self-fulfilling prophecy.  The more you attempt to multitask, the more tasks you’ll seem to create out of thin air, thus perpetuating the I-can’t-get-ahead feeling.  Always bouncing around in your head from one unrelated thought to the next causes your work quality to suffer.  Personal relationships similarly suffer because you never seem to be fully present around your friends and coworkers.

Multitasking may feel like it’s the only way to survive in a high task load environment, but succumbing to the temptation to do multiple things at once is not the answer.

Look, you can learn how Jeff helps organizations achieve their peak performance by passing on the lessons of the fighter squadron.  You can learn more about the  habits that USAF fighter pilots develop while they’re on the ground,  the very ones that allow them to be the dominant force within the battlespace, by visiting his site at Jefforr.com