Are broken task chains are slowing you down?

Picture this. You set off to your bedroom to clean it, and begin picking up the floor. While you are in there, you pick up the dirty laundry off the floor and take it to the laundry room to wash it. You put the laundry in the wash and notice the lint trash can is full. You take this out and stop to pull a few weeds in the garden bed. Hours later, your bedroom is not clean and not much has been done—but it feels like you've been working forever. What happened?

Broken task chains can not only slow you down at home, but also at work. Although handling multiple tasks at work may seem like the fastest way to go, it can actually slow you down. Instead, the key to optimizing your performance (and to actually get things done) is to slow down and perform one task completely before going on to the next one.

Many times when we are trying to do multiple things at once, such as e-mail our employees while on the phone with a customer, can cause us to make mistakes that require us to re-do some or all of the work. It's better to stay focused and get the job done rather than to take a stab at random parts of a large number of tasks.

One 2001 study even took a careful look at this. They found that people who were multi-tasking lost time on their projects every single time they switched tasks. By staying focused and slowing down, you can actually get more done, and that work will be higher quality.

If you find yourself hopping around from task to task, stop yourself. Remind yourself that a broken task chain will only cost you more time later, and instead stay focused until the task is complete.