“Uni-tasking” is the opposite of multi-tasking. We have all heard that you can be more productive when you focus on one thing rather than dividing your attention among several things at a time (like watching Netflix while texting while “working” from home).
Designing buildings is much the same. While it is necessary to have several active projects to keep a business running, we certainly can be most productive if we can focus our undivided attention on one project at a time. Sometimes that means turning off the email and cell phone to prevent interruptions as you work toward a defined goal. All too often, we try to be too accessible to everyone all the time, but that uber-availability could actually be a disservice to others.
Sometimes clients will ask us to just “slip them in” or maybe “we are in no rush, so just work on it when you have spare time.” In their minds, they are being flexible with timing hoping it will cost them less money or something. The truth is that if you set a clear expectation, you can more effectively focus on that goal and have metrics in place to actually achieve it (instead of willy nilly working on something here and there).
To try to work more effectively, I accept the right number and type of projects, I divide their scope into manageable chunks, and I schedule them. I also schedule my production time the same way I schedule my meetings. I also do my emailing at the same part of each day. This enables me to have less interruptions and to have blocked out time to get stuff done.
People often ask me how I manage to get so much done. Planning as much “uni-task time” as possible is my solution. Of course we need to be flexible and be capable of managing unavoidable interruptions when they come at us, but we are in a much better position to be successful if we aren’t already multi-tasking when that happens.
Think about the last time you got overwhelmed. How many things were you doing at the same time? Keep it simple and focus.
If you’d like some tips to get more done in a day, check out this post from a few years ago: www.josharch.com/blog/2016/2/2/how-i-get-so-much-done-in-a-day
If you’d like to learn more about our design process, visit www.josharch.com/process, and if you’d like to get us started on your project with a feasibility report, please visit www.josharch.com/help