Post by account_disabled on Apr 29, 2024 3:42:46 GMT -8
Let’s talk about a real-life, achievable superpower. Heck, maybe the only one we can all lay claim to with a little practice. It would be nice to have one, right? Just one, real superpower, no tricks or drama. A little something to trot out at the next soporific conference call. (“Sorry, I was on mute!”) Batman turned out to be a moody kid who got hold of some tech. Superman? An out-of-towner in red bloomers. But this? Legit. Non-gimmicky. You–but with (and here I need you to imagine my hands waving a little reverb) superpowerrrrr. Your Life as 10 Billion Open Browser Tabs Before I get to the superpower, let’s talk about what your life probably looks like right now. Or your business. Or even just your day so far. If you’re average or read studies about the average among us, one word sums it up you’ve got your one-word summaries, and I’ve got mine.) The last few decades have turned us into a pack of rabid multitaskers. Work in PR, and it’s practically a badge of honor to juggle three things in the service of four clients that all, magically, get billed to the same 15-minute block on your timesheet.
We do this despite the fact study after study has shown multitasking is ineffective, makes you feel productive without actually being productive, and has downfalls whether you’re packing XX or XY chromosomes. And yet? Whether for the sake of appearance, the dopamine hit you get from constantly switching between tasks or some other reason, most of us still do it. I won’t tell you to stop multitasking. Your Diabetes Email List brain tells you it feels good and, for those who need to please a watchful boss, it probably looks good. It is the very definition of incentivized behavior. But, having laid out the case that it’s not all that effective, I will teach you something sneaky and viral—something that can get into your brain and your habits and actually push out the often-destructive urge to multitask. Do that, and you’ll probably get more done. You’ll probably have less stress. And the solutions you come up with for clients and employers will probably have greater depth and efficacy.
If that’s not a by-God PR superpower, I don’t know what is. One Word (And it’s Not “Plastics”) So how do we get from there to here – away from multitasking and into the age of you with superpowers? In a word: Clarity. I know. The word, like “values,” and “mindfulness,” gets tossed around so much it sometimes feels like it can mean anything you want. But clarity–the kind that gives you your PR superpower –means a very specific thing. For our purposes, it is the ability to do the following four things, together and consistently. Train yourself to do these four things reflexively, and you rewire how you approach tasks, eliminating huge swaths of multitasking and probably doing better work. Clarity comes down to four disciplines: 1) Identify the boundaries of what you’re thinking about or acting on. What are you trying to get done? When is it due? Are you lacking information or input that makes working on it right now ineffective? What is and isn’t part of the problem? These sound like basic questions, but we typically don’t ask them of ourselves in our multitasking lives. We just grab the next bit of info we need, or the next thing that needs doing, and take off.