- There is a type of person you occasionally see in the workplace. They are at the Project A regular meeting, the Project B kickoff, and the Project C subcommittee. Their calendar is packed with meetings, so they probably feel like they are "working." However, when you look at the results, the output for every project is finished with the same level of mediocrity.
- Because it's a rush job, it naturally requires corrections, and someone else is forced to make those corrections all over the place. Have you seen these people who just scatter messes everywhere?
- Every time I see such people, I think: before you dabble in various things, isn't it important to try doing just one thing—even if it's small—with total seriousness?
50% + 50% Does Not Equal 100%
- Handling multiple projects simultaneously is a feat only capable for very skilled people. This is because humans are inherently bad at multitasking.
- There is a concept called "Attention Residue." Proposed by Sophie Leroy of the University of Minnesota in 2009, it suggests that even when you switch from Task A to Task B, part of your attention remains stuck on A ("Oh, that's not finished yet"). Leroy's experiments showed that the larger this residue, the worse the performance on the next task.
- Even if you join two projects at 50% capacity each, you lose about 10% of your brainpower worrying about B while working on A. You think you are "50% active on A," but in reality, you are only devoting about 40%. The same happens while doing B, which also becomes 40%. Totaling 80%, meaning 20% of your capacity has vanished somewhere.
- This empirical feeling that "about 20% of capacity melts away when juggling" matches almost exactly with the estimates of Gerald Weinberg, a classic figure in software engineering. He estimated that juggling two projects creates a 20% task-switching cost, leaving only 40% of time for each project.
- Note that there are reports that only about 2.5% of experiment participants could perform two cognitive tasks simultaneously without a drop in performance. Such exceptional people do exist.
- That's why even in consulting firms, being assigned to two projects at 50% each is a privilege reserved for excellent people who have already proven high performance. It's better to think of multitasking as a privilege for the few who can handle it.
Why Do People Want to "Juggling" Tasks?
- Since humans aren't built to be that versatile, why do they want to half-heartedly juggle multiple projects? I think it's because committing to one thing leaves you with no place to hide. You can no longer use the excuse, "I'm busy with other tasks."
- It's the same structure as the phrase "I just haven't gotten serious yet." By pretending to do a little bit of work on this project and that project, you can avoid losing in a single, serious showdown.
- To hedge risks, people spread their rush jobs around. They are sprinkling their lack of confidence.
Rush Jobs Are All Being Watched
- This is a cruel announcement, but everyone around you knows you're doing a rush job. Even if they don't seem to be looking, they are. They just don't say anything and quietly fix it for you, thinking, "Ah, here's another one I have to fix."
- Feedback is an act that takes a lot of energy for the person giving it. So, if someone goes out of their way to say, "I'd like you to do this a bit more like this," they have probably thought the same thing about 20 times in their head.
- If there are 5 people and each has thought "what a sloppy job" 20 times, that's a total of 100 times. The feedback you receive face-to-face is just the tip of the iceberg.
First, Commit 100% to One Core Job
- Even if it's something small, try focusing on one core task in your department without running away. If you repeat the same thing over and over, you gradually get used to it, and what you couldn't do without conscious effort at first becomes something you can do unconsciously.
- It's like a golf swing. At first, you have to be conscious of everything: head position, forward lean angle, grip, ball placement, foot width, backswing angle... But as you continue, your body starts to move on its own without much thought.
- Work is exactly the same. If you focus on one thing and continue to produce results, you will be able to output stable performance at the level of implicit knowledge. Only then can you begin to handle multitasking or multiple projects.
- The reason is simple: if it's a job you're used to, you can do it well using almost no brain resources. The competition for attention residue simply stops happening.
- Although I now work in a way that involves managing my own company while also working as an employee and juggling various projects, I committed to one thing for a long time until I reached this point. Rounding it off, for the first 6-7 years of my career, I did nothing but projects to implement systems and refresh operations. Honestly.
- I'd like to say coolly that "I chose this one thing," but it just happened to be my assignment. However, I feel that committing to that one area for the time being has been quite useful later on.
- What I gained from that system-based operational efficiency work was the ability to "verbalize implicit knowledge." To standardize and optimize operations with a system, you have to verbalize and structure the tasks that people on the ground are doing based on implicit knowledge. If it's not verbalized, it won't run in a system.
- As a result of doing this for 6-7 years, I became able to do it at an unconscious level. This skill is now living in unexpected places, such as verbalizing logic to operate AI or teaching logical thinking by verbalizing "what is happening in the head when thinking."
- So, you don't have to overcomplicate things by jumping into side hustles right away. First, focus 100%, or even 120%, on the one project in front of you. People around you are definitely watching that.
- People want to reach out to someone who has thoroughly committed to even a small task, saying, "I want to ask you to do this next" or "Let's do this project together."
Recently I felt I had been dabbling in too many things half-heartedly, so this was a self-reminder.
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