Sure, multi-tasking has always been with us. From the earliest days of man in the cave, I am sure there was a woman that was cleaning off a hide, boiling some food, and having a conversation with two different cave mates. At least that is the picture in my head from cave-woman days. However, it is clear that a number of new technologies has enabled us to refine and expand the art of multitasking. The other dynamic that is clear to most parents is that the GenF (Facebook Generation) is becoming quite adept at doing multiple tasks at once. Actually to refine that a bit, they are becoming good at handling multiple communication forms while taking input from multiple media sources. AKA, talking on the phone, sending text messages, watching TV and doing homework all at the same time. I was talking to a dad the other day and he mentioned that the scary thing is his son does this and carries a 4.0 GPA at school, so he is mute to change how his son operates. That story leads me to write this opinion piece…
Now we write Technology Story for business people, with business reasons, and such is the case with this topic. As business people, we need to examine the concept of eMultitasking (Yes, I just coined that for this article) and how it is already invading the workplace. Don’t think this is an issue really? Then what do you say about the raging debate about people doing email on their phones or laptops during meetings? What about all the people that do email, text, and twitter during presentations? The reality is that we already have to wrestle with the appropriateness of multitasking in the workplace, we just have not chosen to really recognize what is going on. I get asked all the time about how I feel as a speaker when I look out and see people keying in things on their mobile devices. I always tell them that I believe I either have to capture their attention fully, or have to be OK with the fact that they may be texting, twittering about me, or taking notes, and that is OK with me.
The fact is, we are just on the front end of a trend that will radically change how we do meetings, how we work, and how we view people multitasking. Most people think it is rude today to multitask – let’s be honest. They do not like sitting around a table talking and seeing half of the room typing what is surely not notes about the discussion. We think it is rude for people to text message during dinner at a restaurant, much less at a funeral. We believe people should focus on the event at hand, and the people across from them. Anything less is clearly rude – right? I remember when cell phones first came out, I was standing in line at the airport to get on a plane and was talking into my first generation phone. Being the geek I am, I was one of the first people to be doing that specific thing, and an old man came up to me, WHILE I WAS ON THE PHONE, and proceeded to tell me how rude I was for having that phone call in line at the airport. I am guessing you get the point, what he thought was rude just a few years ago, is now common.
So what is my viewpoint? I am impressed with the next generation’s ability to split their mind onto different inputs. I grew up being told I was only using 10% of my brains capacity. I am not sure scientists know that, but if true, they I believe that the next generation may use 50% of theirs because they will do five things at once and do them fully. It is a sign of things to come in the marketplace. Instead of raging against this as a business leader, I am going to embrace it and provide a culture and methods that leverage it. I am going to require people to be able to multitask, and to do it well. After all, I do not want to be the old man at the airport with GenF and their new found skills. Just a disclaimer… If my mother reads this she will disagree and tell me that no one can focus on more than one thing at a time (she is 70 and she probably cannot). If my wife reads this, she will say that you can choose to multitask, but it will drain your life energy because you are burning mind focus at triple the rates – and for my generation, she may be right…