Estimates put the number of small businesses (companies with less than 500 employees) in the United States at about 20 million. A recent report from the State of Oklahoma estimates the number of small businesses with two employees or less to be nearly 300,000.It would be a fair guess that at least 10 million of the country's small businesses have 10 employees or less.
It would also be a fair guess that almost all of the managers of these very small businesses must engage in multi tasking every day. In this author's view there are only two types of multi tasking: enjoyable and horrible. One will most likely either love multi tasking or hate it. Multi tasking is stsressful either way but it is very stressful for those who hate it.
Those who hate it are most likely to be persons who have difficulty concentrating and staying focused. A simple test is this: do you enjoy and do reasonably well with such things as watching TV and reading something light at the same time? Do you handle conversations fairly well while doing some other task at the same time? Can you follow two lines of thought at the same time without getting a headache? If so, there is no reason you cannot handle multi tasking and learn to enjoy it with a minimum of stress. That is the goal: achieving a minimum of stsress and a maximum amount of satisfaction from multi tasking.
If your answer to the questions was no, then multi tasking must be approached slowly and carefully, knowing that it will cause you fits if you try to rush. It often also means hiring another person to assist you or outsourcing some of the most vexing tasks such as accounting, billing or personnel management.
Napoleon Bonaparte would dictate letters 12 at a time, using 12 secretaries. He would move from one secretary to the next, remembering where he had left off with each letter and continuing each dictation accurately as he made the rounds from one to the next. That is a classic example of multi tasking! We should all be so gifted!
In today's world of small business the challenges are much less dramatic. We find ourselves trying to sort mail while answering a demand phone call. We try to finish something on the computer while jotting down important things to remember to do next, tasks that we forgot to jot down before we got started on the day's list of things to do. Most frequently we find ourselves of necessity stopping with a task half finished because something more important, such as speaking with a distressed employee or customer, has come up. Then we must return to the first task to get it finished and hope to pick up the train of thought.
The most common casuality of the inevitable stop and go work pace is filing. It is so easy to pile up things that need to be filed. The piles grow almost as if by magic!
Organization is the starting point for those wishing to take the pain out of multi tasking and filing is the foundation for being organized. Never let a day go by without finishing the filing. The reason? Because filing is the secret to being able to find things! Spending time looking around for information, letters, bills, receipts and messages is probably the number one cause of frustration in the small business management arena.
Good order begins with finding things. Finding things begins with putting them where they belong in the first place. Putting them where they belong means attention to filing, every day, perhaps every few hours.
Therein lies the second secret to taking out the pain: heading off frustration.
This second key has to do with patience: turn frustration into satisfaction. Like Napolean, the manager's work is never truly finished. Unlike Napolean, however, the manager's work is rarely dramatic or earth shaking. In fact, it is so ordinary that the lack of challenge itself can become a road to burnout. The secret is always the same: get the tasks to be satisfying or they will get you to be bored and bitter. If this approach means taking more time then so be it. Better to work longer and get the job done right than to hurry and work in a constant state of uproar, frustration, and disorganization.
The road to patience runs right through managing a small business! It starts with reflecting on the best strategies in your own situation for handling multi tasking. No matter what the approach, there are fundamentals that help. These include an organized approach to filing, to laying out the day's tasks and schedule with some sense of priority, keeping track of what needs to be done tomorrow, careful attention to messages, routine and clear notes in the date book and accurate tracking of deadlines.
Finally: take frequent short breaks. The small business manager who only takes breaks when there is time to take a break will not last. There is never enough time to take a break. The work is never finished. This is where the third secret comes into the picture. The first secret to enjoying all of this is good order built on good filing. The second is turning frustration into satisfaction. The third secret is managing your use of time. Translation: schedule your breaks if you want them to happen!
So: believe that multi tasking can be satisfying and even a source of joy but at the same time take the steps necessary to make it so. There is no magic in small business management but there is great reward for those who do it well.
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