Concentration and single-handling are essential requirements for all great achievement. Concentration means that once you start on your most important task, you resolve to persevere without diversion or distraction. Your ability to concentrate single-mindedly on the most important use of your time is the number-one requirement for success.
You could meet every other requirement with intelligence, ability, and creativity, but if you cannot concentrate on one thing at a time, then you cannot be successful. You need to do first things first, one thing at a time, and second things not at all. If you do not discipline yourself to concentrate single-mindedly, you will invariably find yourself working on low-priority tasks.
Always allow enough time for your top priorities. Figure out how much time it is going to take to do the job and then add 30 percent as a cushion, to take into account unexpected interruptions, emergencies, and responsibilities. With a 30 percent cushion, you will probably be quite close to correct in your estimate of the time necessary to do the work. This is one of the secrets to achieving high levels of productivity in your work.
Earl Nightingale said that “every great accomplishment in life has been preceded by a long, sustained period of concentration.”
Single-handling is one of the most important of all time management techniques and life management principles. Once you start a task, you stay with it until it is 100 percent complete. Single-handling requires that you do not continue picking up and putting down the same task, over and over, going off to something else and then coming back. With single-handling, once you pick up a task and begin on it, you discipline yourself to bring it to completion before you go on to the next task.
Apply single-handling to your mail and correspondence. Deselect unimportant items immediately and then deal with the important documents only once, either by filing or responding to them right away.
The principle of single-handling—made famous by time management expert Alan Lakein—comes from time and motion studies comparing the output of people who concentrated single-mindedly vs. the output of people who went back and forth on a task, going away and returning to that task many times in the course of task completion. What these studies found was that each time you put down a task and turn to something else, you lose momentum and rhythm, and you lose track of where you were in doing that job. When you come back to the task, you have no choice but to review your previous work, catch up to the point where you were when you broke off, and then begin again. This process turns out to require as much as 500 percent of the amount of time otherwise necessary to complete a task if you had started with it and stayed with it until it was 100 percent complete.
In simple terms, single-handling can reduce the time you spend completing an important task by as much as 80 percent, and dramatically increase the quality of the finished work.
There is a good deal of argument today over the concept of multitasking. Some people feel that they are quite capable of performing at high levels of productivity while they are working on several tasks at once. The studies have now proven that this idea is totally false.
What the experts have discovered is that multitasking is actually “task-shifting.” The fact is that you can only do one thing at a time. If you stop doing one task to turn to another task, you must shift all of your attention and energy to the new task. When you turn back to the previous task, you are simply making a shift of attention, like pointing a light beam from one target to another. Then, you must bring yourself up to speed on the old task before you get started again.
According to USA Today, each time you shift from one task to another and back again, you burn up a certain amount of brain energy and intelligence. At the end of a busy day of multitasking, you can lose as many as ten IQ points. So, you become progressively dumber throughout the day, ending the day feeling burned out and often indecisive about the smallest things, such as what you want to have for dinner or watch on television that evening.
Multitasking is tempting, but it is an insidious use of time. It can actually sabotage your career and undermine your ability to accomplish the most important tasks upon which all your success depends.
Resolve today to make it a habit to plan your work carefully, set priorities, and then begin on your most important task. Once you have begun on your top task or output, resolve that you will work single-mindedly, without diversion or distraction, until that task is complete.
One of the techniques used by highly productive executives is to work at home in the morning or evening, or on the weekend, when you can concentrate single-mindedly without interruption of any kind.
Another key to single-minded concentration is to avoid the “attraction of distraction.” Instead of responding to every e-mail or ring on your phone, “leave things off!” Close your door, turn off all your devices, and put everything aside so that you can work on the one task that can make the greatest difference to your company and your career at this point. When you make this a habit, your productivity, performance, and output will double and triple, almost overnight.