Multi-tasking isn’t bad. There are times when it is very important to do so. But then, there are some instances, especially when it comes to business, when multi-tasking should be set aside. When running a business, all your attention should be focused only be on one thing.

Serious entrepreneurs the world over will all say the same thing: a truly successful entrepreneur does not multi-task!

So what is „multi-tasking“? Simply put, it is doing a number of tasks simultaneously at a given time. This is usually done so that plenty of work can be done over a short amount of time.

An example that many of us do without even noticing it is listening to a news report while sipping coffee while reading the newspaper while keeping an eye on your kid or sibling while they finish their breakfast. Without even intending or noticing it, that’s four things at once! Cool, right?

In the short-term, multi-tasking is okay, as long as what you’re doing is fairly routine and technically simple. These things are so complex that an irregularity in performing here or there will severely damage the whole process. This is called „continuous partial attention“, and it is okay for those everyday, mundane situations. However, the life of a successful entrepreneur, especially when it comes to business, is anything but mundane.

One of the things that a serious entrepreneur needs is concentration, especially if your business is one that calls for face-to-face or personal interaction with customers. No customer would be thrilled if you would be talking to them, while at the same time, talking to another customer on your phone while emailing another on your computer. No one will ever accuse you of being a competent entrepreneur if you’re like this, much less a serious entrepreneur.

The Costs in Switching Tasks

Experimental psychologists have long been studying the effect of multi-tasking on productivity. Numerous studies have shown that there is a „switching cost“ every time you change from one task to another. This means that you need as much as four minutes to go back to maximum productivity on a task after an interruption. Now, if you’re trying to juggle four tasks, you lose as much as sixteen minutes in one cycle of task-switching alone. Such a waste of time, huh?

So do you still want to multi-task? Sure, a serious entrepreneur has a great number of things to do. If it were possible, there should be more than 24 hours in a day!

What any successful entrepreneur should do, however, is finish one task at a time. On the average, you may have the same result as compared to doing portions of each task. The benefit comes from the non-quantifiable things that you get out of completing tasks one at a time. You get less stressed simply because you’ll have one frame of thought at a time. As a result, as you shred off tasks one by one, you have less and less things to think about. And this, perhaps, is the secret of success for any serious entrepreneur!