Have you ever had the
demoralising experience of
being engaged in a phone
conversation with someone who
suddenly starts shuffling papers, filing
or (worse still) reading and responding
to an unrelated email?
If you were sufficiently forward
as to protest and the other party
sufficiently ignorant as to persist with
his or her other activity, he or she
would no doubt have given you the “I
can multi-task” line. But I’ll wager it
was obvious to you that, at best, your
“multi-tasking” conversation partner
was hearing only sporadic sound bytes
of your end of the conversation.
It’s a neurological fact that the
brain can focus on only one matter at
a time. It might flit between subjects,
issues and conversations . . . but it can
concentrate properly on only thing in
any given moment.
In his recent best-seller, ‘The
Organized Mind’, neuroscientist
Daniel J. Levitin produces evidence
to underscore how minimising the
attention devoted to any one thing
(the natural consequence of trying
to spread one’s concentration
amongst several things) dramatically
decreases the quality of attention
both to that and to everything else
on that individual’s plate. Conversely,
conceptual and critical thinking, along
with insight and ingenuity, Levitin
stresses, happen only when
we screen out distractions
and properly focus.
Already, it’s pretty
obvious how the
nonsense practice
of “multi-tasking”
negatively impacts
not only the quality of
critical submissions,
but every process
that feeds into their
Have you ever had the
demoralising experience of
being engaged in a phone
conversation with someone who
suddenly starts shuffling papers, filing
or (worse still) reading and responding
to an unrelated email?
If you were sufficiently forward
as to protest and the other party
sufficiently ignorant as to persist with
his or her other activity, he or she
would no doubt have given you the “I
can multi-task” line. But I’ll wager it
was obvious to you that, at best, your
“multi-tasking” conversation partner
was hearing only sporadic sound bytes
of your end of the conversation.
It’s a neurological fact that the
brain can focus on only one matter at
a time. It might flit between subjects,
issues and conversations . . . but it can
concentrate properly on only thing in
any given moment.
In his recent best-seller, ‘The
Organized Mind’, neuroscientist
Daniel J. Levitin produces evidence
to underscore how minimising the
attention devoted to any one thing
(the natural consequence of trying
to spread one’s concentration
amongst several things) dramatically
decreases the quality of attention
both to that and to everything else
on that individual’s plate. Conversely,
conceptual and critical thinking, along
with insight and ingenuity, Levitin
stresses, happen only when
we screen out distractions
and properly focus.
Already, it’s pretty
obvious how the
nonsense practice
of “multi-tasking”
negatively impacts
not only the quality of
critical submissions,
but every process
that feeds into their
switching from one task to another
(i.e. than those who stay focused on
one activity until it is satisfactorily
completed).
Potentially, there’s also evidence
that multi-tasking lowers one’s
IQ. A University of London study
found participants who multi-tasked
during cognitive tasks experienced
compromised IQ score declines similar
to what might be expected had those
individuals smoked marijuana or
stayed up all night.
Coming back to bidding. When
you’re otherwise throwing everything
at a must-win, high-stakes bid, why
go at it with diffused mental energy?
To do so argues with every claim you
make – to yourself, to your bid team
colleagues, and to the potential client –
as to the importance of victory. â–
production. As a bid strategist and
coach, here are just two of the key
processes that I regularly witness
being adversely affected:
- Participants in strategy workshops
insisting on reading and responding to
emails and text messages . . . switching
off to the thread of fast-moving, group
conversations and thus forgo-ing their
understanding of, and input into, the
evolving bid strategy. - Section authors and other
writers interrupting their flow of
writing inspiration to answer emails
and their own incoming phone calls.
(If professional authors feel the need
to shut themselves away in order to
place their full and uninterrupted focus
on the piece they’re working on, why
would someone who doesn’t write for
a living feel they can produce a quality
written output while “multi-tasking”?)
Aligning with my cynicism over the
concept of “multi-tasking” proficiency,
Stanford University researchers have
found that “multi-taskers” (a) have
difficulty organising their thoughts
and filtering out irrelevant information,
and (b) are actually slower at
IT’S A
NEUROLOGICAL
FACT THAT THE
BRAIN CAN FOCUS
ON ONLY ONE
MATTER AT A TIME
