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I’ve been listening to the audio book version of Make Money, Not Excuses by Jean Chatzky. (Referral link.) While I do think it has a good deal of useful money-related information in it, the thing she’s said that’s struck me as most interesting so far is this:

Multi-tasking is the biggest time suck of all.

I tend to agree with her. You’d think that doing a whole bunch of different things at once would allow you to accomplish more, but sometimes the more things you try to do at once, the less you actually finish and the longer it takes you to do any single one of them. For example, right now on my desk I have the following things that I’m working on:

Writing this post.
Entering data from a K-1 form into my taxes.
Entering receipts into Quicken.
Figuring up quarterly sales taxes for the city.
Figuring up quarterly sales taxes for the state.
Reconciling two bank statements.
Verifying that my IRA contribution did in fact come out of my checking account.
Mailing out a check.
Seeing if it’s too late to order from my son’s fund raiser.
Filling out the flexible spending form for reimbursement.

And what have I actually accomplished in the hour since I sat down to work?

Eating a piece of chocolate cake.
Emailing a relative.
Watching the dog play.
Looking over my son’s homework.
Choosing today’s topic to write on.
Checking a message board.
Checking my email again, in case it had changed in the last 10 minutes.
Writing the first paragraph of this.
Emailing someone regarding a project we’re working on.
Emailing my husband regarding that same project.
Getting up for a glass of water.
Opening Quicken.
Answering a math question.
Finishing this.

Yet, if I’d sat down solely with the intent of doing just ONE of the previously listed little projects instead of trying to accomplish ALL of them in an hour, chances are that one thing would have taken me 15 minutes or less. In fact, by focusing on just one item at a time until the list was completed, I could have finished ALL of the items in less than an hour total. Instead, I’ll get to spend nearly two hours on them, because the first hour was filled with the distractions of multi-tasking. I could have done something more productive with that hour instead. Next time I’ll organize my time and save money.