Today is another rant about the silliness of corporate America, inspired by my interview last week. The interviewer asked me about my weaknesses, areas where I could improve. I told her that I wasn't a great presenter, an answer I had prepared. (No one cares much if accountants aren't great presenters, for the most part.) But she was persistent and asked if there was anything else. Finally I said that I was not a big fan of too much multi-tasking.
Mistake.
She jumped on that, said we do a lot of that here. Of course you do. Then she went on to explain that I wouldn't just be able to work on one thing at a time; there would be meetings and phone calls and multiple priorities. OK, now you're just being insulting.
Let's be clear about one thing: I won't do that again, If I have to name two areas for improvement, next time I'll mention that I was criticized once for not firing someone quickly enough. True story. I'm not sure my answer had anything to do with my not getting the job, but it didn't help.
Let's be clear about another thing: I would rather be right than say what people want me to say. Yes, this approach works out horribly for me, often , but I get the satisfaction of being right, and that means a lot to me, for some reason.
That said, I am right to question the devotion to the wonders of multitasking, and the corporate stooges who disagree with me are wrong. A number of people who deal with lots of interruptions and try to handle too many responsibilities have a sense that it's unproductive. I certainly did. Multitasking leads to those days when you work all day and don't feel like you got anywhere. It only makes sense that, if you spend too much time bouncing from one task to the next, you are wasting time between tasks. I compare it to trying to (literally) juggle; if you are asked to juggle a few objects, you can learn to do that efficiently. If you are asked to juggle more than you possibly can, you will drop something, or ignore something, or keep trying and get frustrated.
And lo and behold, research confirms what people know intuitively. People are not really wired to be good multi-taskers. We need time to concentrate on one thing at a time. People who think that they are good multi-taskers typically are not. But the idea is so entrenched in corporate America that you can't change it.
Not that I didn't try. At one job I had, a long time ago, I sent my boss a copy of an article indicating that multi-tasking was overrated, then pointed out to her that one of the top executives in the company had told us to work on just a few things at a time, in a presentation we had all seen. She said that she wished he had not said that, because we all have to work on lots of things. It just didn't fit her preconceived notion, which turned out to be that multi-tasking was more or less the only important skill in the world.
So, I am right, and up to 111 days.
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