If you have only one job to complete you will have no choice but to give that job your undivided attention. When you concentrate all your effort upon one thing at a time, it is easier to be more effective. If you must divide your time between two objectives, you must keep two balls in the air at the time without dropping one as you switch your attention between the two jobs
Every time you switch between jobs, you lose a little momentum. You need to mentally and physically put aside the paraphernalia of the one task and pick up from where you left off on the other. Each job switch drains a little of your momentum, so that your productivity suffers. Add a third job at your list of concurrent task and you need to concentrate a little more on the job switching process and a little less on the jobs themselves. As you add more jobs, there comes a critical point when the number of jobs you have on the go requires you to become as focused on job switching as on the tasks themselves. At this point productivity takes a sudden dive. Research has shown that people reach the critical point at seven concurrent tasks for women and five for men. Sorry if that appears sexist, but the research found that most women are more adept than men are at coping with variety of concurrent tasks.
Coincidentally, how often do you see a juggler manage to keep more than five objects in the air for any length of time? The limit is reputed to be mental, rather than one physical agility. Many jugglers can handle five balls. Of those, fewer than 30 percent can manage six, fewer than 30 percent seven balls, and the few who can juggle seven or more generally keep all the balls in the air for only seconds, not minutes. At work, we often hear how people struggle to ‘Keep all their balls in the air’ or how they ‘dropped the ball. Many world-class top executives successfully manage more than seven concurrent tasks, but these are truly exceptional people and when you examine how they do it, inevitably find that they employ people solely to help them organize their time and maintain high personal productivity. You obtain higher productivity from people when you have them focus upon a small number of tasks or objectives. Too few, and some people find their work repetitive and boring, so their enthusiasm is reduced and their productivity falls. Too many, and people start dropping the ball.
When you set objectives and tasks for members of your team, avoid job descriptions that contain long list of catch-all responsibilities. Instead, give each team member clear written objectives, with an absolute maximum of seven, and a realistic maximum of five. Even better, restrict the list to the three! That way you‘ll get the result that you want.
