From the course: Time Management Tips

Use background tasking to get more done

From the course: Time Management Tips

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Use background tasking to get more done

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- In my time management fundamentals course, I talk about how there's no such thing as multitasking. There is either switchtasking or background tasking. Switchtasking is when you're trying to perform two activities that require attention at the same time. It's never productive and always inefficient. Background tasking, however, is when something mindless, mundane, or automatic occurs in the background while you're performing an activity. Background tasking can get you the maximum benefit for the time that you spend working. So it's actually something you want to actively look for. You want to find opportunities to background task. So I'd like to give you a few suggestions of places that you can look to find opportunities to background task. The first is through delegation. If you think about all the different activities that you have, only a few of them are most valuable. These are the things where you want to actively focus your attention. It's better for someone else to do the less valuable activities. For instance, it might be my most valuable activity to write a course like this, where my less valuable activity is proofreading. So I could go onto one of the variety of outsourcing websites that are out there, for instance one example is Upwork, and I could look for someone who is good at proofreading. This allows me to focus on my most valuable activity and write another course while I delegate the proofreading to someone else. Another way to delegate is through training. By taking the time to train someone else on my team or a subordinate on how to do something, I can get a huge payoff through background tasking. Another way to gain time is through using a machine to background task. Computers are an obvious example. If they're crunching numbers while I'm doing something else that's great, but also we can use something like a printer or a scanner. They can be involved in a long scanning job rather than me sitting there and feeding one piece of paper at a time, if I have a good scanner that allows me to give it a whole bunch of papers while I work on my most valuable activity, on something else. And finally, there are lots of little personal opportunities for background tasking in your day. For instance, if you have a daily commute, you might use that time to listen to an audio book. Or what if you want to go through courses on this library? You could exercise while you do that to get both the benefit of the learning and the physical health. Background tasking can be an effective and powerful tool to improve your time management. I recommend that you are constantly on the lookout for opportunities to background task.

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