Good multitasking skills means good single tasking

Once in a while someone states that it's essential nowadays have good multitasking skills. Then at the same time someone else states, that you need to learn to focus on one thing to really get things done. This seems like conflict, but I think neither is really wrong or right.

Fact is that in work and personal life is more and more full of interruptions and new tasks to be done. People try to achieve more and more without making anything properly. The key for good task handling is a skill to be able to jump in to things fast and then focus on those.

Method to handle many things at the same time is to give full focus to one thing at the time, and not letting the others to disrupt your focus. Most important thing is the capability to switch tasks. It requires skill to let one thing go and jump into another. For many this is the hard part, they can't really let the other thing ago and for that reason are not able to concentrate on the new thing either.

There is couple of tricks I use for task switching. The number one thing is, there's always time for documenting the status. It doesn't take long to write down the thoughts, ideas and place you where, when you jump in to another task. When you learn it, it takes only 5-15 seconds. With doing this, your awareness can be totally focused on the new thing. Without short documentation, you need to try to keep your previous status on mind, and you can't focus on the new thing.

Second thing is closely related to the previous. In order to be able to document your situation fast, there needs to be ways to document it available. Either it's the textpad in computer, note taker in mobile or post-it with pen, these needs to be available and you need to have a practice of documenting the status with that tool. It's easy to learn, but you can't afford 30 seconds of waiting, where to document.

There are many good methodologies on concentrating on essential. I really recommend trying out habit 3 from 7 habits of highly effective people, personal backlog, personal kanban board, pomodoro or any other time and task management system. Even though these are excellent ways to learn to use your time more efficiently, these still don't change the fact that sometimes you need to change tasks rapidly. Either it is the phone, email, text or something that comes to your mind suddenly, you still need to be ready to act on it. For that, it's best to learn to change tasks fast on the fly.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book I read - The Adventures of Johnny Bunko

I've been a fan of Daniel Pink since I read A Whole New Brain. I've been following his blog and reading his books. Finally I got my hands to The Adventurer of Johnny Bunko - The Last Career Guide You Ever Need.

Image: Danpink.com

It's not at all traditional business book, but it's actually written/drawn in the form of Manga. It's a really entertaining and fun way to deliver the message of the book. Comic type of an approach works well and tells in many points much more than words would have told. This actually got me thinking, why there's not more things explained in comic book format in business books. It would work really well.

Book content itself is also full of good points. It really gives good tips on making yourself to use more of your talents at workplace. And also it encourages to chase for more meaningful and enjoyable work life. Still it doesn't forget the realities of business world and it gives quite realistic picture of work life nowadays.

This is a fast reader, it took me bit over an hour to read it through and this even included some more detailed evaluation of some pages and pictures. I really recommend to get this to your hands, it might really be the last career guide you ever need.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Do you need to live you work in order to be good on it?

There's different level of devotion to work. There are guys who really live the work life with all of their cells. They are genuinely interested on the subject area of their work. Then there are the other kind of people, those who work and are interested on their area, but they don't really live it. Are ones better than the others?

I know some people, who really live their work with every cell of their body. They seem to know everything that's happening in that area. They know all the fancy stuff and latest trends in their area. They can be seen as gurus of knowledge in that specific area.

Then the other people, which I think most of people actually are, those who do keep track on their work life during work times. Still they are not that devoted to the work that they don't use their spare time to keep up with work related stuff.

So do you need to live your work in order to be good on it?

The first ones are in many ways good on keeping up the competition. They can drive changes more easily and can be quite a fact droppers. They can eat alive all the others with their superior facts about area of interest. They really help all the others to keep up with technology or interest just by sharing so much valuable information about surrounding environment.

Bad side on the devoted ones is, that they often doesn't seem to value opinions of the less educated ones. In many cases that might be excusable, but also they might miss some important point of views at the same time. There's two sides on this one too, part of those devoted ones can't get away from the main stream thinking of the topic under interest. They can't really invent anything other than the things that other devoted ones also see and invent. There are exceptions, there are guys who know everything, but still can see the trees from the forest.

What about the ones which are not devoted to their work? Are they less valuable workers?

Surely they can't be as knowledgeable about all the things happening in their field that the other ones, but they still can keep quite well up-to-date if they just want to. Their main benefit comes from possibility to see the totally stupid things out of new thinking in their field. They might have better position to model what they see with some other knowledge they've got from their different interest field. Of course that requires that there are some real interests, other than TV and the yellow press.

As dull it might sound, there's room for both. In order to stay on leading edge of something, you really need devotion. There needs to be true interest to always keep up with latest that is happening on the field. But also there needs to be this larger and different points of view. There needs to be people who can see things differently and map things surprisingly.

Maybe the most worrying thing on the devoted ones, is that they can easily demotivate the ones that are interested on other things on their spare time. There's a change that really motivated, but not devoted ones, are put down just because they don't seem that motivated and capable due to their personal priorities being something else than work.


It's a true challenge for managers to get these people to work effectively together.  

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Considering options for the future

I guess you all already know that it's going to be hard time for all nokians in Finland. There most probably will soon be announced major layoffs and I'm under thread as almost everyone else. 

I've been thinking my options for some time now and one of the options would be running my own thing or co-running with some other guys. That's a long term dream and wish, but it's always so easy to find reasons why it's not suitable. Think of the following for example.

I would like to run my own business..

• but I haven't made any code for some time and hiring external coders makes starting new business bit harder
• but I have 2 small kids and girlfriend at home and I'm the only income for the family now
• but we have big mortgage I need to be paying off

Even though these are real, these are still excuses. Couple a days ago I decided to again think on the way Dan Pink's book told me, "change the word but to the word and", meaning that realize the obstacles you have and think again what you could do to overcome those .

So I decided to start one by one checking if those obstacles could be overtaken. That would give me more options on what to do in coming year or so. So I started to learn to code again. I'll use at least one hour each day to code and see if I'm still capable. I'm not expecting to be a world class coder until summer, but at least it will be easier to think what creating SW from my ideas would actually mean. I have to admit that I've really liked it so far. I did start easy, just to motivate myself.

I've learned that worrying won't bring any solutions. Being positive, doing, failing and learning will. So I'm going to be positively looking whatever challenges there will be ahead in coming year or so. 

Quite a self motivating speech. If you got this far, you might have been the only one. I just had to write this for myself.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Interesting video of using practical wisdom

How conveniently I ran into this TED video from Barry Schwartz about using practical wisdom. I see this to go actually really closely with thoughts there are about motivation in Dan Pink's Drive I recently read and reviewed.

Both talk about what moves people. This video talks about when the smartest ones out there know when to bend the rules and improvise to make good things happen in world and eventually change the system to serve all of us better.

The connective factor here is the purpose. Having an understanding of the whole and vision how something or some things could be better in the future is driving force (a.k.a the motivation) for behavior.

It's a longish talk, but it is worth of all of it.



If you don't have the time to check the whole video, go to 20:20 where he talks about what makes people happy. There's a lesson for all of us. "Research has shown there are two things that make people happy, love and work..".

The more I check these Ted talks, the more I love those.

How to prevent interruptions in workplaces

I watched recently Ted talk from Jason Fried. He is the author of Rework I read lately. Jason talked about why work is not done in the work places, but rather in almost anywhere else.

His main point is interruptions. He identifies two types of interactions. Un-voluntary interruptions (or distractions like he calls those), when someone or something else interrupt you without you having possibility to affect on it. And users voluntary interruptions, like reading mail, checking FB or going to grab coffee. He makes a valid point here. When you check your mail, it's your decision, when someone comes to talk to you, it's not.

He blames meetings and managers on these interruptions. I tend to think good on people. I don't believe managers and others are interrupting people by plain evil. Also I think meeting organisers often do think their meeting has a meaning. And often these interruptions, managers or meetings do have a value. The problem is more on the timing and the actual interrupting. So what could we do.

Jason had already couple of ideas you can listen, but I'll bring couple of my own. Maybe some meetings could be kept as a chat type of a thing. Someone is typing in a stream and others have the possibility to participate when they want. It could be for example announced, that during this 4 hour window, this chatroom is dedicated to this subject. Feel free to join to discuss or read the stream later.

Other idea is to have an actual traffic lights next to your desk. Available and Do Not Disturb. Those do require environment, where you can say to your boss and colleagues, that I know what is important, let me do my job.

Maybe the main thing still is to recognizing this on your workplace. Are people interrupting each other. Are people doing things that require concentration and takes some time to really get back to the mood again. If yes, then talking about this will definitely be the first step.

If you have any good ideas and expertise on this area, it would be nice to know more.

Book I read: Rework (by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson)

These guys in 37 signals have really made up something special. They have succeeded with many different products, books and many other. Now they are revealing bits of their working style and mindset with this book.

Style of the book is a bit arrogant. I guess that's the purpose since it brings many contradictory thoughts compared to main stream ways of doing business. They're message is to quit the bullshit and concentrate on things that makes you and your customers happy. They're message is that good user experience is the way to beat your opponents.

They also see growing too fast as a danger for complicating things and not as mandatory action for businesses to survive. They're hiring policy is really cautious. Their advice is to hire in the last possible moment, when all of your are just too damn busy to make something which is absolutely necessary.

I advice to read it to get you thinking. There's some things I didn't agree right away, but that's quite normal. Still I really enjoyed reading it. It's compact, full of good thoughts and some good examples. It gives the finger to many believes in current business making and working habits.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen