For many decades now, the idea of multitasking in business has been seen as a positive one. It’s something that means any business owner can get a lot more done, and the idea behind multitasking is that you can save time and be more productive by doing a series of tasks at the same time, rather than focusing on each one individually.
The problem is that although the idea of multitasking might be a good one, the practice of multitasking just doesn’t work. Rather than offering business owners the chance to get everything done more quickly, all it does is ensure that everything they are doing is finished to a lower quality because they’re not able to concentrate on it, and in the end, they’ll either have to go back and spend more time on the individual tasks or put out a poor quality product or service. It’s actually better to do one thing at a time. So what are the alternatives to multitasking? Read on to find out.
Set Your Priorities
One of the reasons that you might fall into the trap of multitasking is that you don’t set any priorities in your business. Every single task, no matter how big or small, is put together with the same importance, meaning that there is no real way to differentiate them and work out which ones are more urgent than others.
In business, some of your tasks are naturally going to be more important than others, and writing a list that sets everything you need to do out in order or priority is the best way to start. That way, you can work through the list in order, making sure that the most important and urgent items are completed first and then moving onto the less important ones.
Hire More Help
No one is good at everything, and if you try to do it all in your business, you’ll find that two things happen. The first is that you spend more time working in your business than on it, and when that happens, growth stagnates. The second is that, as mentioned above, what you do get done will be rushed and potentially give you a poor reputation.
The answer a lot of the time is to hire more help. Find people who have the knowledge and skills to do the tasks that you find difficult. This means you can stop multitasking and focus instead on the core of your business. You can hire permanent or part-time staff, for example, or if this would prove to be a step too far right at the start of your business journey, you can outsource. Using Navitance bookkeeping to go through your figures or a web designer to create your website, or a social media manager to help you online is a great way to get work done without having to compromise.
Use Tools
Probably due to the fact that many more people are becoming ‘solopreneurs’ and starting their own businesses with little to no help, recently there has been an upsurge in assistive tools for those who want to run their business in a more cohesive, smooth way.
The more tools you can use, the less work you’ll have to do manually, and although you might still technically be multitasking, it’s the tools that are doing the work for you, so it’s not quite as problematic and can result in exactly what you want it to.
