This morning I read a great quote from Jim Collins:
“If you have more than three priorities, then you don’t have any.”
For many of us, this presents a HUGE challenge. We live in a on-demand world where multitasking is an essential skill. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; anyone who has ever made the leap from cell phone to smart phone can likely recall the lightning-bolt moment when you realize you now have email, the ability to review important documents, and a fully functional GPS device all in the palm of your hand. However the risk in all of this, even for those of us that consider ourselves multitask-wizards, is distraction and curbed productivity.
Want to “measure your distractibility”? Check out this interactive feature from New York Times Online (you may need to sign in, registration to NYT-Online is free):
When you finish the test, you’ll get your results stacked up next to “low multitaksers” and “high multitaskers.” At first glance, I was quite pleased with my results. I consider myself a high multitasker (and I likely demonstrate that in the best and worst of ways), and I passed the distractibility test with flying colors…
But you also get this:
“Researchers at Stanford University found that high multitaskers performed poorly when presented with multiple distractions, meaning they had trouble filtering out irrelevant information. Low multitaskers were not affected by the distractions and could hold more items in their short-term memory.”
Uh oh. That means those of us who multitask the most are also most prone to distraction. So why did I beat the odds?
Probably because of the intentional moves I made to stop curb my distractability: I was alone in a quiet office before dawn (click here to read quotes from well-known early risers, something I am not, but aspire to be…maybe), had already created my 3Board today based on the quote from Collins (3 priorities on the board, directly above my primary workspace, nothing gets added until something gets checked off), and turned off my Blackberry (something I typically only do when the cabin doors have closed). Of course as you can see from the picture, writing a blog post was not on my 3Board 
Better get started.
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Respond to this post by clicking the “reply” link to the right of the title, or by clicking here.
What’s on your 3Board right now?
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(Startup Quote! and Daily Routines are both awesome sources for interesting quotes and tidbits of information. Definitely follow-worthy.)
