Slow-motion Multitasking -By Saliu Momodu

At least one social researcher, this time, Writer and Economist Prof. Tim Harford, is pointing us in the direction of a high productivity work model he has now termed slow motion multitasking. This is the result from years of study which shows that great achievers and highly creative/productive people like Albert Einstein, are hardly ever “focused”. This is contrary to what we’ve inadvertently been made to believe over the years.

Matter of fact, the life and personality of about 40 different scientists from diverse works of life have been studied by a Psychologist Venice A. Dickson. He came out with findings that the most enduringly creative scientist shifted their research focus or topic on average of 43 times in their first 100 published research papers.

Albert Einstein for example in 1905, released four groundbreaking research publications from widely different areas of enquiry; one on Brownian motion, another on special relativity, and the others on photoelectric effect and the famous energy equation. All these in one single year.

So how is this possible, you might ask. People like Einstein and several others were able to do this through multitasking; slow motion multitasking that is. But many a time, what we do in the guise of multitasking is actually a late rush to cover for already wasted time, or for cramped-up schedule with a looming deadline.

What Writer and Economist Prof. Tim Harford and other creativity experts like himself are recommending is slow motion multitasking where we take a number of utterly different or related tasks between which we seamlessly alternate at a steady pace as our mood and convenience would allow.

The secret here that propels creativity is that we don’t stay idle or get bored out when we are stuck or become tired, we actually keep working and getting productive by simply moving on to another refreshing task that unlocks our enthusiasm, our inquiry- thereby our creativity.

So how about you try out the slow motion multitasking model for yourself today? Collect a few tasks and projects like writing a book, learning a new language or even something like starting an NGO about a favorite concern, multitask on them and let’s see where you will be in five years- slow motion multitasking that is.

Saliu Momodu is the Producer & Host of The Scholastic-Ng Podcast