Abe Jarjoura

“Lost time is never found again.”

Benjamin Franklin

Productivity, of course, is related to time. The more productive a person is, the more he or she can produce within a certain period of time.

The more productive you are, the more time you have. So what is the hack for productivity?

It is figuring out the result you need from the task at hand and concentrating on that task until it is finished before you go on to the next one.

I have news for you: The idea of multitasking to provide a large number of results within a period of time is a false.

You will probably produce a bunch of half baked results, ones that are of compromised quality, while at the same time you feel completely exhausted and overwhelmed, and who wants that? ( Rhetorical question, of course.)

When you are doing a bunch of tasks all at once, there will be a time in the middle where all or the majority of those tasks are being worked on at the same time. They are in “mid air” somewhere, and you have a bunch of them to do.

Think back to times when you had some unfinished business that you knew had to be done. How did you fee? Stressed out I bet.

Now remember how you felt when those tasks were finished and put to bed. How did that make you feel? Relieved? Like a weight came off of your shoulders? Happy? Accomplished?

You want that feeling? ( Again rhetorical), then finish the job, and you will get that sense of accomplishment all day long.

Let’s take a simple task ( and here I’m going to simplify it to silliness.)

Imagine that you are sitting at a table and there’s a pen on it.

The task is to move the pen from your left side and place it back on the table to your right.

The task can be broken to three simple steps: You pick up the pen, raise it in the air, and then place it back on the table. There, the task is finished.

Now, imagine that while you are holding the pen in the air, ( in the process of transporting it)your phone alerts you to an email you just received.

Well, you have to find out what the email is, so you use your other hand and click on the email and start reading it ( now you are doing two things together and neither one is finished.)

While you are holding the pen in the air, in the process of transporting it, and in the process of reading your email, your young daughter comes into the kitchen asking you where the peanut butter jar is.

You start wanting to tell her where it is while doing the other things……………STRESS! Nothing is accomplished. All in the middle.

Now imagine:

1. You took the pen, moved it and placed it on the right. Done..Ahhhh
2. then you opened your email, read it, and (hopefully) moved it to the trash…. Complete… Ahhhh
3. then you answered your daughter by telling her where the peanut butter jar is. She goes and gets it. Finished…. Ahhhhhhh.

That is the secret. That is how you accomplish so much; one task at a time. NOT ALL OF THE TASKS AT ONCE.

Let’s take that to the office:

You arrive in the morning, where you turn on your computer and immediately start reading the emails. You finish the first email and move it to the trash, you do the same to the second and third, then as you are reading the fourth, your coworker comes into your office with a very important question about how to turn on the new coffee maker since it doesn’t seem to be working.

Of course, you being the nice person that you are, leave the email you were reading to help with the emergency of no coffee. As that is happening, the receptionist informs you that Mrs. jones is on the phone and she wanted to talk to you, so you immediately leave what you were doing, and jump to the nearest phone.

I’m stressed just writing this!

Then, you have to go back to your emails when you can, but you forgot which email you were working on or where you where in its handling, so you have to repeat the process; something that could have taken you five minutes is now taking you ten.

Time is churning. It’s being eaten away. You are doing things twice instead of once.

I understand that certain tasks may be too big to start them and not leave them until done.

Well, in that case, you break those tasks to several smaller sections. You chunk them.

Start with the first small chunk and don’t stop until it is finished. Do not go to anything else until that chunk is finished. Then you are free to start another task, and so on and so forth.

Never touch anything unless you know you can finish it. Do not open the email unless you know you are going to take it all the way to completion.

With handling tasks, starting on them, moving through the process and taking them into completion, you accomplish and produce so much and in the process, you create time.

Abe Jarjoura D.D.S., M.S.

Founder: Dental Care Team Group

Founder: Control “Freaks”- A group for dentists who want to smile more