This topic is a bit controversial I guess because the fairer sex have long been suggested to better at multi – tasking than men.

Well guess what – I agree 100%!

It has always perplexed me as to why more women aren’t in senior management positions although that is rapidly changing thankfully.

So what is ‘Multi – Tasking’? Is it simply the mental process of switching off from task A and switching on to task B,C etc. Like partioning your brain and with a signal to switch just the way we click the mouse on our PC to go from one file to another?

We all have to multi-task to varying degrees in our work. In Sales, multi-tasking is vital (or is it) to success as you may be with one prospect addressing their problems with your solution in the morning, then you are with another prospect in the afternoon who may have a different set of problems that you are trying to address with your solution. BUT THAT IS NOT MULTI TASKING! You are doing your job!

OK so what is multi-tasking you may ask?

In computer lingo, it means “the system can perform multiple tasks without purchasing additional hardware”

In the context of human abilities:

According to Wikipedia  (source)

Human multitasking is an apparent human ability to perform more than one task, or activity, over a short period (1 hour). An example of multitasking is taking phone calls while typing an email and reading a book. Multitasking can result in time wasted due to human context switching and apparently causing more errors due to insufficient attention. Studies have shown that it is impossible to focus on more than one task at a time. However, if one is proficient at one of the tasks at hand, then it is possible to do these tasks.

In summary, this whole topic of multi-tasking is a bit of a furphy really and if you have read this article I bet it’s got you thinking! So if you are at a job interview and this question comes up you now know what to say!

The real secret is to be organised and manage your time effectively.