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The importance of multitasking is one of those things that I just cannot stress enough. I have learnt this the hard way, not just once but a number of times, each time in a different area of my life. I look at my childhood and wish I had done more things while at school. Looking back on my higher education, again I wish I had done more during those days. And looking back over all my years at work and the 12- to 18-hour working days and furthermore even the weekends too, makes me brood over all that time that I have lost – time that I could have used on so many of those things that I now wish I had done earlier.

Of course, I have had my share of successes in all these areas. I have been one of the best performers at school. I have been able to maintain that through my years of higher studies. At work, my performance has been commended by many, and I hold many memories of success and satisfaction. However, looking back on these times, what eats me up are the thoughts of all the other things that I could have done in my life if I had put the time to more efficient use and done a few other things that could have brought even more laurels my way. What I regret doing is more of multitasking, or may be I should say, more of diversified multitasking.

You may argue that I may be belittling the fact that I would have probably not done all that well in all the successes I have achieved in the various areas of my life, had I to give less attention and time to those focus areas. However, I am not ruling out that possibility. It is partly true that I was able to achieve all those successes because of the time and effort that I gave to those areas. However, I do know that I would have been able to achieve the same successes without giving hundred percent of the effort that I gave to it. And I do agree that this is very much arguable, but what I am talking about is just about one to five percent of that effort, which I could have given to other potential achievements in parallel.

What I am trying to point here is the importance of doing more than one thing at a time, tasks that are diversified and independent of each other to an extent.

We all have at least one activity in our life that we focus on mainly. For a student, it might be the studies, or may be a particular sport. For a working person, it might be his job or business. It is very easy to get occupied in this one main activity, so much so that one loses radar on most of the other important things in life. We tend to focus almost all our time and attention on this one main thing, and even compromise on the balance of life’s basic needs. Ever gave a thought to what would happen if the one main thing that you are focusing on, all of a sudden loses all its importance? What if the main thing is no longer the main thing, not because you choose it to be that way, but because the very foundation that the main thing is based on collapses? For example, let’s say you have been working very hard with hopes of a promotion. You work late nights, stress yourself, compromise your social life, and probably your children rarely see you ’cause they are asleep before you get home and either you do not wake up before they leave for school or you are back to office before they are even awake. You have been doing this for a few months, and you can see the promotion coming up anytime. Then one fine day the company decides to do some cost saves and announces a freeze on all role progressions. Worse still, the company files for bankruptcy, or asks you to leave as they can no longer take the cost of your employment. A possible living nightmare, isn’t it? “If only I had spent some time on enhancing my skills and being up-to-date on the needs of my industry”, you repent! “If only I had not made all those sacrifices for the sake of something that I had no guarantee would come my way.” But then it is probably too late, and the only option left at hand is to start from scratch. It is important to remember that there should always be something to fall back on, at least temporarily. And any such backup can reliably be present for you only if you have been taking time all along, in parallel with the main thing, to ensure that there is such a fallback plan.

The fallback plan is one main element associated with the need for multitasking. But let’s say you have been futuristic and you have that covered already, and the main area of focus for you now is not one whose importance if nullified could have any drastic impact on your life. That’s where we come to the second element associated with the need for multitasking, and that is, constant value addition. Let’s consider you have been working on a very important project at work. This time I will leave it to your imagination to think about how much you would give to it if you were in that position. You would in the least put in a lot – if not all – of your time and effort into this one project. One fine day the business sponsor decides that the project no longer aligns with the direction in which the business is heading, and calls it off. Your months-long effort is just reduced to nothing with just one decision from senior management. How would you then like to remember all those months at work which finally did not bear any fruits? This and other similar instances have happened to me not just once but a number of times. I remember the first time I went through such an instance, and was left repenting why I did not take up any other significant activity alongside the main one, by for example extending the schedule of the main one just a little bit in order to fit in another less important but significant task in parallel. What thus happened was that I lost two months of effort, and there was zero value addition to the company in spite of the effort that went in. The second time a similar instance occurred, I was well poised – I did not experience that as a sudden vacuum, because there was another important task that I was handling at the same time. There was constant value addition over those months in the form of the partial effort spent on the other task that was working on in parallel! It was a different feeling altogether. I now make it a point to practice day in and day out, the art of multitasking, even on the busiest of days, to the slightest extent possible.

Before I sign off, I would like to make a few notes regarding the importance of multitasking:
1) Never spend too much time on one thing, however important it may seem to be.
2) Always have a fallback plan for the main pivotal focus area, ideally articulated by taking some time in parallel while working on the main task.
3) Do at least two main things in parallel. That way, if one is deemed useless, the other one helps maintain the balance.
4) Do as many different things as possible, as early in life as possible!