I always thought being great at multi-tasking was an essential part of being successful in Sales. At a high level it is true, you have to be able to do a lot of different things and do most of them well to be successful.  The problem is when trying to execute those two don’t usually go together, at least not at the same time.  There’s a book called The Myth of Multi-tasking I came across recently that talks about how you brain can’t physically do two things at the same time. Your body can but what your brain is doing to make this happen is called ‘task switching.’  Every time you do something different (take notes while trying to pay attention to a presentation) your brain is switching tasks. It does this very quickly so we don’t notice it but the problem is that every time our brain switches a task it loses time, even if it’s just a fraction of second.  The more tasks we do the more time we lose which is why we get less and less effective the more we try to do.  Have you ever been checking your e-mails while listening to a webinar?  If you’re anything like me, if you asked me what the webinar was about at the end or what my key take-away was I probably wouldn’t be very specific with my answer.

 

There is a simple way to fix this.  Just try to focus on doing one thing at a time for a short period of time.  For instance, if you need to make old calls, schedule an hour to make those calls and prepare for that hour so you know exactly who you’re calling and what approach you’re going to use. When you’re making those calls, just make the calls.  Don’t check e-mail, send information, get coffee, etc.  You not only become more efficient with this focused approach but you gain momentum and usually get better at whatever task it is you’re doing as you go.