Toughest Things First & Normative Multi-Tasking - Aditya Yadav

1. “Running an Agile Fortune 500 Company”
Aditya Yadav, aditya.yadav@gmail.com
in.linkedin.com/in/adityayadav76
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2. *
*A Typical Global Company
*Fortune 500/1000
*200 Divisions
*40 Countries
*25000 Employees

3. @ Acme Inc.
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4. *
*Original Question “Every Research Says Multi-
Tasking is a Strict No No! But how else do we
get work done? We are confused!”
*The Correct Question - “There is a lot of fine
print in the research. And the Pop Articles
don‟t pickup the fine print, they just Hammer
some Mumbo Jumbo… allow me to explain…”

5. And The Philosophy Behind The Answer
*

6. *
* Energy, Motivation, Passion or Drive generally decreases with time
* Exhaustion, Boredom generally increases with time
* “Capability-Possibility Graph” is a Dependency Graph spread out over
time. Within the Capability-Possibility Graph its best to do the
toughest thing first ceteris paribus.
* You don't want to be tired when its time to do the hardest thing.
* One of the most effective ways to create an enjoyable experience is
to stack the painful parts of the experience early in the process.
Psychologically, we prefer experiences that improve over time.
* That means it‟s better for the annoying parts of an experience to
happen early in the experience.
* Also we don‟t enjoy it when painful experiences are drawn out or
repeated.
* Example: Give the bad news first and then finish with the good news.

7. *
* Several Researchers have come to a consensus
* You lose 10 IQ points by multitasking
* You lose 40% Productivity
* We don‟t actually multitask. We switch-task, rapidly shifting
from one thing to another, interrupting ourselves
unproductively, and losing time in the process.
* Heavy multitaskers are less competent at doing several
things at once than light multitaskers
* Clifford Nass (Stanford) - 20-minute rule. Rather than
switching tasks from minute to minute, dedicate a 20-minute
chunk of time to a single task, then switch to the next one.

8. *
* Normally you have no control over the environment
* To live you need to do a lot of things – put clothes in laundry, call someone
while waiting, drop your son to his friends house, come back pickup the
laundry, buy groceries, go home, cook, pickup kid, dine, sleep.
* Purists are in trouble if they think they can put everything that needs to
be done in a Strict Sequence!!!
* Its not Normative!!!
* There is a difference between things interrupting you stochastically vs you
self electing to switch to something else you want to do when you wish
* There is a Difference between (i) Doing multiple things at the same
moment e.g. talking on the phone while driving vs (ii) Switching between
things at will e.g. parking on the side, making a phone call, then driving
out
* Clifford Nass gets it right with the Heuristic 20 Minute Rule

9. *
* Empirical Findings (R‟ber the 20 Minute Rule) – 4 Work Streams
1. Toughest Things First
2. Quickest Things First „in between Breaks‟
3. With Things with Deadline‟s done JIT (Just In Time)
4. 1 or 2 Really Long Term Things that act as Universal Sinks for
anytime that‟s free and you don‟t want to idle/waste away
* Examples
* Toughest Things - Job
* Quickest Things - Chores, Shopping, Fixing things,
* Long Term Things - Hobbies, Upbringing Kids, Grow The Family, Pay for
the House & Save for the Education
* JIT Deadline Things – Pickup Kids from school at 3pm, Get Dessert
before the shop closes at 10pm

10. *
Aditya!!!