Agile Clowns or "How to be a great multi-tasker"

What phrase did I see on your resume? Oh yeah: "great multi-tasker." That's awesome! You pride yourself on delivering more in less time by juggling several projects at the same time. It's a badge of honor and you wear it proudly.

Sorry to break it to you, but a clown is better at multi-tasking than you are. If a clown can do it, you must be able to do it just as good, even better.  The question is, are you sure about that?

Want to know what I hear at work more than anything else these days? I hear a variation of the phrase: I'm really busy. A typical hallway conversation goes something like this:

Julie: Hey Tom how are you doing?
Tom: I'm OK, but I'm really busy?

Julie: Me too. I don't have enough time to get everything done.
Tom: I hear ya. I have 4 projects I'm working and I'm double booked - gotta go.

Julie: See you at the staff meeting.
Tom: Oh yea, almost forgot; see ya there. Busy, busy, busy.

It even sounds a like a busy bee buzzing around - bizzy, bizzy, bizzy,... I just want to swat something.

The good news - As humans we can be quite good at multi-tasking, but not in the way most of us think. You might be able to make a sandwich while talking on the phone to your best friend. That's multi-tasking. You can walk and talk at the same time. You might be talented enough to play a guitar and sing. That takes some intelligence right? Yes and no.

What about texting and driving? That's extremely dangerous to yourself and others. What about watching TV and reading. Can you really do both? Can you design an application architecture while writing user stories for the product backlog. I doubt it. We think we can multi-task, but in fact research shows that we can't. Stuff that requires cognition - you can't multitask. In the book and associated PBS show "Super Brain" by Dr. Rudolf Tanzi, a neuroscientist, describes research that shows for cognitive activities we are unable to multi-task. When you think you're multi-tasking, you're probably context switching - a whole separate topic to be covered another day.

So, how can you be a good multi-tasker?

Choose physical actions that can be learned through repetitive practice. Or things that can be memorized (like the lyrics of a song). Get good at it. Learn to play a song on the piano; learn to sing the lyrics to the song, combine them and voila - you're multitasking. Obviously it takes some brains to do that, but once you've learned the guitar part and the lyrics it's relatively easy to do.

What if you're watching TV and reading at the same time? Does that really work. You're likely getting bits & pieces of each - not very effective. Ever had a conference call where you can tell one of the participants on the phone isn't paying attention. Of course, you have. Maybe you're talking to a co-worker and you can tell she's not really paying attention. She's "multi-tasking." Actually, she's ignoring you because she's busy reading an email instead of listening to you. Again - not really multi-tasking. So get it out of your head that you're a great multitasker when it comes to knowledge work.

So, what do you do now? Remove the phrase from the resume? Unbold it on the resume? Or maybe try to educate those who don't understand. The last approach might not get you a job, but if it does you've probably picked a place that just might have a clue about multi-tasking.

Everybody update your resumes - unless you're talking about being an Agile Clown - juggling, riding a cycle and balancing a pole all at one time - you aren't a true multitasker. Don't be an agile clown thinking you're truly multitasking when you probably aren't.

Note: This topic came about during and after a conversation that I had with Allison Pollard. It's was a conversations where I don't really remember who said what first. With that said Allison and I talked about the concept of Agile Clowns prior to me writing this blog.