Welcome to The Weekly Simplifier, brought to you by…

Contents:

1. A Note From Lance
2. Quote of the Week
3. Article: Multi-tasking — The Cost
4. This Week’s Simplification Tip
5. In the News & On the Web
6. Featured at ProjectSimplify.com
7. Keep Smiling

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1. A Note From Lance

Hi folks,

I offered to take the “Note” task off of Shawn’s plate this week, and in the spirit of saying “no” to multi-tasking, she said “yes” to my offer!

This issue is getting into territory that frankly makes me a little uncomfortable. If multi-tasking is not the more efficient way to get things done, then I’ve got a lot of reforming to do. I’m a mega-multi-tasker, and it never even occurred to me to question that practice until I started working with Shawn and Project Simplify. But the more I read about it (you may recall it came up in On The Web in TWS Issue #6), the more I have to question whether I am really serving my better interests by having 60 tabs open in my web browser at any given time. (I wish I was kidding!)

Shawn takes the issue head on in this week’s Article, and follows it up with a complementary Tip to help you improve your “mono-tasking” skills. (Or, to help us, I should say.) There’s more here too, including a cool new site feature and 10 good reasons to smile, but in the interest of staying focused, I’ll just get out of the way and let you proceed through the newsletter one item at a time. That’s apparently the most efficient way to go. ;-)

Enjoy!

Lance Brown
Co-Editor
The Weekly Simplifier

2. Quote of the Week

“Reduce the complexity of life by eliminating the needless wants of life, and the labors of life reduce themselves.”

-Edwin Way Teale

3. Article: Multi-tasking — The Cost

By Shawn Tuttle

To multi-task or not to multi-task,
that is the question.

Face it, sometimes you just have to multi-task. But given a choice, the wisdom of multi-tasking is being called into question. Studies on brain psychology are showing that the brain is less efficient when asked to perform multiple activities at once. We often multi-task because we believe we are being more productive and efficient with our time. Are we really, though?

Personal experience shows that multi-tasking sets the stage for a frantic mindset and easily leads to dropping the ball on high-priority items.

More often than not, the question shouldn’t be “Can I do it?” (as in, “Do I literally have the ability to concurrently do these activities?”) but, “What is the cost?”

Is losing your peace of mind worth it?
Is risking your high-priority goals worth it?

I answer, “No” and “No” to these questions.

Scenario: You find yourself in the middle of 3 open emails, a phone call, a spreadsheet, and a due-next-week, high-priority project. You’re mixing ToDos with projects, thinking you are making progress on both. At the end of the day though, you feel more frazzled than anything, disappointed in the progress made on your project, and barely a dent in the Todo list. You worked all day but what to show for it?!? Argh!

What else is going on: Your brain does a lot of back-end work for you. When you learn a new system or process, your brain logs the instructions for that task. The next time you go to check emails, for example, your brain calls up instructions along the lines of: go to email program, scan for high-priority, read, determine if response required and by when, etc. Hey, you’re smart. This happens quickly.

However, if you decide to switch gears and pay a bill, your brain shelves some or all of the check email instructions and calls up the pay bills instructions. Ok, bill paid. Brain now shelves pay bill instructions and calls up check email instructions. Just describing it sounds laborious.

Each task switch takes time and brain juice, both of which are limited resources. But just as important as managing your time and brain juice usage is managing your priorities.

When you allow a multi-task mindset, low priority items have a way of overtaking your workspace. Low priority ToDos then open the door for irrelevant activities, like surfing the net. What this means is that your high priority items don’t get done. Theoretically, you could analyze each additional task to determine if it is a high priority, but that brings us back to wasting precious time and brain juice on continual evaluation.

Granted, we don’t always have total control over our work environment…and even a simplicist like myself admits that multi-tasking can be necessary and even helpful sometimes. But making an effort to focus your work time, and making sure that multi-tasking isn’t filling your time with low-priority “incidentals” are worthy pursuits—and the cost of multi-tasking should be factored in when making a conscious choice to work that way.

Mono-taskers of the world—unite! :-)

—

Shawn Tuttle is founder of Project Simplify

4. This Week’s Simplification Tip

Mono-tasking Tips

You’ve decided to simplify by practicing more mono-tasking in your work flow. The following tips are tips to help keep the “multi” from creeping in on the “mono” when working on projects.

• No phone. Cell phones quiet, office phone to voice mail, alert anyone else who answers the phone for you that you are not available.
• No e-mail. Just because you hear the “ beep” alerting you of a new message doesn’t mean you have to switch gears to deal with it. I mean it!
• Close your door (if in a room that has a door to close). Feel the difference. I’ve found it interesting to observe that my attention, however slightly, meanders out through an open door.
• Keep you ToDo list handy. If, while mono-tasking one thing, you have other “I forgot about this, that, or the other” thoughts pop into your head, jot them down on your list for later.
• Know your goal, i.e., know when you are going to stop. Is it a time limit? Is it when the first draft is complete? Is it to clear out the inbox? Know when to say when.
  

Observe which tips work for you and stick with them.

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5. In the News & On the Web

If you know of something in the news or on the web that should be featured here, let us know!

In The News

Clearing the way ahead (Stuff - New Zealand)
http://tinyurl.com/fc5op
This profile of New Zealand time-management expert and professional organizer Rosita Guy may be the most useful and informative profile/tips article we’ve featured yet. Or at least, it seems to get at a little more of the meat than some of the others. (And it has the seemingly revolutionary suggestion that businesses should consider reducing their operating hours - or even closing an extra day!)

Interview: Donald Wetmore, founder, Productivity Institute (Washington Technology)
http://tinyurl.com/zs22v
Washington Technology’s editor talks with the Productivity Institute’s Donald Wetmore about “about how to increase personal productivity, avoid procrastination and, best of all, avoid unnecessary meetings.”

Downsizing has its ups and downs (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review)
http://tinyurl.com/fsjc7
This story about moving from a larger home to a smaller one focuses primarily on retirees, but the stories and tips there should be relevant to anyone “downsizing” their living accommodations.

Organizer finds her place in life (Baltimore Sun)
http://tinyurl.com/g7ehr
“Professional organizer Susan G. Romanic declutters closets, organizes garages and turns home offices into models of efficiency. But she specializes in cleaning up a particular kind of mess, the kind caused by people who hoard. One client, she said, was living out of his SUV because his house had become uninhabitable. Another had piled so much stuff on the dining room table - including 17 rolls of tape - that the table’s feet were starting to split….”

6. Featured at ProjectSimplify.com

The Latest Post in Each Category

Judging from the title of this section this week, you might think that the point of this is to show you the latest post from each category at the site. But despite the title, and despite the fact that several latest posts are listed below, this section is not about that—not precisely.

The actual point here is to introduce you to the Latest Post in Each Category page at ProjectSimplify.com. There you will find the latest posts now, and at whatever later “latest” you choose! This page (which produces a display like what you see below, but with more categories) is a great way to check in if you’ve been away for awhile. You can see what categories have new posts, and then click through to either the category or the most recent post to get caught up.

So with no further ado, here are selections from the latest Latest Posts page:

• Articles >> Planning Time vs. Doing Time - June 14th, 2006
  [This article was originally featured in The Weekly Simplifier Issue #5.] Even professional organizers have challenges managing their time and efforts on occasion. These are actually opportunities to…
  
• Books >> Intro to Permaculture - April 14th, 2006
  The specifics of Permaculture are laid out in detail in Permaculture Pioneer, Bill Mollison’s, textbook style book, PERMACULTURE: A Designers’ Manual. A lot of it has to do with homesteading–working …
  
• Musings >> Simplify life through action, word, & stuff - June 19th, 2006
  In Toastmasters we use a clicker. The person in the role of Grammarian listens for the “um” “aaaannnndddd” “uh” words that insidiously sneak into our impromptu speaking (guests and prepared speeches a…
  
• Organization Tips >> Intro to the Reference Binder - May 31st, 2006
  “It’s around here somewhere… I just saw a file with related information… it must be in this same drawer…” 5 minutes later, still no username and password for the website hosting account. I wa…
  
• Others’ Products >> Learning MacSpeech’s iListen - April 9th, 2006
  At the MacWorld conference in SF this past January I met the people who created iListen, a voice dictation and command program. Since I write a lot and am beginning to feel the minor symptoms of repet…
  
• Time Management >> The right time for gardening - June 18th, 2006
  This weekend found me outdoors “bonding” with the garden in the front yard. Some people bond with their animals, I bond with green leafy things. And now that we are regularly experiencing 90+ degr…
  
• Tips to Simplify >> Simplify for others - June 2nd, 2006
  This morning didn’t start out too well. Small paint brush in hand, laboring unsuccessfully to keep paint on the wood and off the hardware of the window, I could feel frustration build. The sim…
  
• Tools >> Online brand monitoring - June 15th, 2006
  Here’s a comprehensive list on how to monitor your brand online by italian blogger, Luca De Fino. Don’t worry, it’s been properly translated into english by SRF Global Translations. (I like SRF’s tagl…

You can find a link to the Latest Posts in Each Category page under “Special Features” in the site’s sidebar.
Here is the web address for the page: http://projectsimplify.com/latest-post-in-each-category/

7. Keep Smiling

Top 10 Reasons to Smile

1) It looks better than a frown
2) It improves your day
3) It makes other people’s day brighter
4) Make new friends
5) Shows friendship
6) Leaves favorable impressions
7) Enjoyable to give and receive
8) Makes you look happy, confident, and self-assured
9) Puts others at ease
10) A smile could be the start of a lifetime relationship!

[Found on the Web.]

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Thanks for reading - see you next week!

Publication Information
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The Weekly Simplifier is published by:

Project Simplify
P.O. Box 597
Nevada City, CA 95959
phone: 530-205-5775
web: www.projectsimplify.com
e-mail: (newsletter@projectsimplify.com) newsletter (at) projectsimplify (dot) com