Multitasking during the SAT

Watching my daughter get ready to take her college entrance exam Saturday reminded me of my own test-taking days.

Remember when you, pencil in hand, did battle with a bubble sheet that seemed at the time to have the power to define your worth and competence?

I tell my kids that even if they don’t remember everything they’ve learned taking exams is good preparation for their future in the workplace. That’s because they’re learning how to face crunch time and deliver under pressure.

But here’s what’s totally whacked out: can you imagine taking the ACT or SAT, or any kind of exam, while you checked email every 10 minutes? And multitasked on something else you had to do that day? And kept your eye on Slack or IM or Google Chat?

Of course not. But that’s exactly what most PR pros do today when they’re attempting to do their best work, facing crunch time, and under pressure. And that’s viewed as normal, part of being in a “service business.”

That’s one part of normal you don’t want to be.

What if you could shut out distractions and really zero in on your most important project today? How much better would the final outcome be? How much will your bosses’ or clients’ confidence in you grow when they see what you’re really capable of? How much more rewarding would it be to know you did your absolute best work?

Here’s the thing – you CAN shut out distractions and really zero in on your most important project. If you’re currently stuck on a technological leash (you’re not alone), it may take some time to untrain coworkers and clients, but you CAN do it.

One eye-opener for me came when I was engaged by a company headquartered in Hong Kong. Our typical working hours were almost exactly opposite. I made the difficult decision from the beginning that I wasn’t going to check email after work to see if they needed me. That meant that every time they emailed me, it wasn’t until they went home, slept, and got up the next day that they saw my reply. And you know what? It worked! I actually think it made both sides more productive, because instead of firing off a bunch of emails randomly whenever we thought of something, we were more purposeful about communication and ended up lumping most everything into one email a day.

If this sounds intimidating, start small: block off one hour a day for your most intense project. Close your email and don’t answer the phone. Sound scary? You probably sit in meetings that last an hour where it would be inappropriate to respond to email and people make do. Yes, there are times when an hour’s difference in response to a journalist can cost you a placement here or there. But your increased quality and productivity will boost your results more than enough to compensate.

This final part was the scariest for me to confront, and it’s either going to help the medicine that we can all choose to take go down or it’s going to completely turn you off. I’m willing to take that risk in an effort to help.

We think that we have to keep checking our devices so that we can be “accessible” and “responsive.” And those good intentions are certainly part of the story. But what really drives us to allow all those interruptions and distractions is, deep down in our subconscious, we’re actually scared of the opportunity (responsibility?) to do our very best work. I still fight this.