Get Smart!: How to Think and Act Like the Most Successful and Highest-Paid People in Every Field

Multitasking Versus Task Switching

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The Principle of Constraints

Multitasking Versus Task Switching
Constantly responding to emails, text messages, and phone calls forces the individual to engage in what is called multitasking. However, this is more rightly defined as task switching. You are not doing several tasks instead,
you are switching back and forth, from one task to another and then back again. According to one study, it takes you about seventeen minutes after you have broken off a task to respond to an incoming message for you to get back on task again.
Throughout the day, your attention switches back and forth, like a windshield wiper, seldom completing anything of value. When you add in social media and the obsession that many people have with checking
Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, you have a formula for career disaster.
This is why they say, Social networking is social not working.”
The solution is simple. Leave things off. Check your email twice a day,
at 11:00 am. and at 3:00 pm. Other than that, turn everything off so that you can dedicate yourself single-mindedly to the task at hand.
The Principle of Constraints
This is one of the best creative thinking tools of all. The Principle of
Constraints says that between you and any goal there is a constraint that determines how fast you achieve that goal.
Sometimes this is called the bottleneck. Sometimes it is referred to as the choke point. Andrew Grove, the former CEO of Intel, referred to the main constraint holding you back as the limiting factor in any production process.
What is your major goal today, and what is the constraint that sets the speed at which you achieve it?
To rephrase this question, Why aren’t you already at your goal?”
If your goal is to increase your sales and profitability by 50 percent,
why aren’t your sales and profitability already 50 percent higher If your goal is to lose weight, why aren’t you already at your ideal weight When you ask this question, very often the answer you come up with is the constraint that is holding you back. Often, when you ask and answer this question, what will pop into your mind will be your favorite excuses, the

reasons that you most commonly give for nonachievement in a particular area.

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