After years of intensive context-switching while at work I must say that single-tasking was an incredible discovery. I’m not kidding, it really kicked things off. Finally I’m actually doing work at work- I’m following up with customers in time because I have time and attention to do it, I remember things because I take notes before switching to different tasks, I do what I have committed for because I don’t check my personal email every 5 minutes or spend time on flickr because I have lost the focus and wandered there by accident. I even started some personal project which I spent some time on every day. (More about it in few months).

I must say that my superiors have also noticed improved performance which was a big encouragement to keep up the good work. Yes, for those who would rather not work- being able to do more work may sound like a bad idea, but where I work- one can get fired if his performance graph lingers below the line for too long. That being said, I love my work, so being able to do more makes me happier.

When it comes to single-tasking while not at work, I’m still not sure where will that get me. I don’t find myself happier if I only eat when I eat yet, nor when I don’t listen to the music or audiobooks while driving. But I’ll keep practicing and see where will that get me. Who knows, maybe one day eating, showering, driving et al will become my meditation.

About the method of creating habits.

In a nutshell, I think it rocks. These 30 days just fly by and if you’re not worried to much that you don’t do 20 other things you’d rather do instead of reporting the progress on single habit you’re creating, you’re good to go. And btw, you shouldn’t worry about these 20 things, you can’t do them all at once anyway.

I think it is commitment plays a vital role here- even if that’s on a blog few people read. I must admit that the first day after a period of 30 days I was multi-tasking like crazy- not sure if the fact there was more work than usually had anything to do with it, but I was literraly writing a message on IRC while reading some email while listening to the phone conference while drinking coffee. And I didn’t even try to stop myself, I can’t believe this was happening. But I’m getting back on track so I think it was just a stupid “I’m free!” thingy. I hope I will get better at this in time. If not, I’ll let you know.

Lessons I learned.

So what where the great findings during these 30 days of single-tasking. I think they will vary a lot from person to person, but here’s what helped for me:

• Turn off distracting notifications (think growl, skype notifications, email notifications, twitter etc.)
• Turn off email notifications (yes, ditto, but you really have to do it).
• Turn off email when working on a task. Never use email as a Todo manager.
• Check email, twitter, flickr [,you name it] once, the later the better. I personally check them not earlier than 2am and only when everything else is done.
• Take notes before switching between the tasks
• Always have current task active in the task manager
• If you lost focus, take it easy – take a breath, think what you were just doing and gently bring yourself back to that task. Check your todo manager – you may well have notes on what you were doing lately.
• Take notes during conference calls.
• Even if you’re not doing what you’re supposted to- take it easy and just be aware of it. Or better- try to bring yourself back gently.
• Think, read, listen about your goal often- always be aware of it.
• Company IM is evil.

Overall, I think there’s a lot to do to become even better at focus like reducing all that noise- clutter on your desk and computer desktop, mess in your drawers, distractions on the wall infront of you etc. I’ll keep you updated with whatever I do to get closter to perfect focus.

So what is about Single-tasking? Well, that’s just a habit recommended on the book that I would like to start from. I tried to single-task for couple days and indeed, I am already getting some things done. I don’t mean to say I’m cool now, no way. I just tried it once and I liked it. Otherwise I am stuck trying to get way too many things done – stuck so badly that I can no longer get even simplest things done, like finishing reading a book. And I don’t even [actively] twitter or use facebook which I though would be biggest performance killers. I am only adding new feeds to google reader but really it was about 5 months since I last read any of the >600 unread articles.

Well OK, my Beautiful Wife gave a birth to our first kid 5 months ago which I believe could be related. But he is 5 months soon (tomorrow), yesterday he started crawling, soon he will have new foods added in addition to mother’s milk, learn to sit, walk, run.. I guess I also have to move on .

This article is meant to help me develop this new habit. “How?” you might ask. Well, here’s the deal – as per Leo, to create a new habit I have to:

1. Select one habit for a challenge. (Single-tasking)
2. Write down my plan (see below)
3. Post my goal publicly (there you have it)
4. Report on my progress daily (see comments)
5. Celebrate my new habit (done)

As you may have guessed, I’m planning to use this blog (do you mind?) to publicly post my goal and also – to report on my progress in the comments. I think writing an article as an update every day could be an overstretch while the goal is really to keep things simple. What else? Ah, the plan. For a plan I need to state:

1. what my goal will be each day
2. when I’ll do it
3. what my trigger will be
4. what event will immediately precede the habit that is already part of my routine
5. whom I will report to

1. About the goal. For me single-tasking means no multi-tasking. Actually I like word context-switching better to make a clear distinction from doing things in parallel – we do not actually have quad-core brains and so often confused multi-tasking is really just an illusion of parallel work. So what we really do is switch between different contexts and tasks. Some are good at switching the gear, some aren’t. I’m not which is why I think minimizing distractions and trying to concentrate on one goal at a time matters the most to me personally. My goal each day is to identify the distractions, find a solution for them, catch my self if I start to hesitate and “read” the chapter about single-tasking on the book once in a while (like once a day?) to remind me how I can keep practicing to stay focused.

2. When I’ll do it? Well, it’s really all about doing it all the time. Hardest part will be my job I think. I work for Percona as a MySQL performance consultant and in addition to always being accessible to colleagues, customers and family via email, phone, IRC and other IMs, I also often work with multiple customers at a time, eat my lunch, have conversation with my wife (did I mention I work remotely?) and upload cool new weekend photos to flickr. All of that is not really a requirement – it’s just how I’m used to work thinking that way I’ll be able to accomplish more. Yeah right.. Time for a change, no?

3. Trigger? Well since the goal is to do it permanently, I hope it’s safe to say catching my self context-switching should trigger single-tasking.

4. Preceding event. I have a habit to plan my day before I check the email or sign into IMs. I open my calendar, todo manager and then juggle the tasks so they fit in the day, take note of the meetings I have etc. Sometimes I find myself opening personal email, flickr some other distractions at the same time. If I manage to control myself at this step, it should be easier throughout the day too.

5. And, as I mentioned, I will be reporting here. If you ever feel I was discouraged, please encourage me so I get back on track .

Shall we?