Employee productivity » Expert speakers http://www.employee-productivity.com Tips and techniques to be more productive Mon, 01 Jun 2009 15:02:11 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 The growing employee productivity divide http://www.employee-productivity.com/2009/02/the-growing-employee-productivity-divide/ http://www.employee-productivity.com/2009/02/the-growing-employee-productivity-divide/#comments Tue, 10 Feb 2009 15:10:56 +0000 admin http://www.employee-productivity.com/?p=223 This employee productivity site is sponsored by The 845 Club. They asked us to highlight a post from Seth Godin as his comments were exactly the reason they came up with the idea of their business. In fact – bizarrely, the business idea was born just 3 days before Seth posted his thoughts… so maybe it’s worth checking out their video-based e-course on employee productivity?

Hopefully you’ve heard of the great Seth Godin – marketer and blogger extraordinaire… well if you haven’t – look him up – the man talks sense!

In particular, he talks a lot of sense in a post back in October 2008. The last paragraph is below…

Can you imagine someone who works in a factory that processes metal not knowing how to use a blowtorch? How can you imagine yourself as a highly-paid knowledge worker and not know how to do these things… If you don’t, it’s not hard to find someone to teach you.

You can see what ‘these things‘ are in his post, here.

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]]> http://www.employee-productivity.com/2009/02/the-growing-employee-productivity-divide/feed/ 0 Employee productivity – which is better – one project or multitasking? http://www.employee-productivity.com/2009/01/employee-productivity-is-one-project-or-multitasking-best/ http://www.employee-productivity.com/2009/01/employee-productivity-is-one-project-or-multitasking-best/#comments Thu, 29 Jan 2009 10:28:30 +0000 admin http://www.increasingworkplaceproductivity.com/?p=109 We all run around all day doing all kinds of  ’stuff’ – some have methods of prioritising, some run complex lists, others just get on with it and end up muddling through.

We wanted to ask the question – is focusing on one project, or having multiple on the go better as far as employee productivity is concerned? We realise that you don’t necessarily have a choice in the matter – but given the choice – which would you choose?

There are differing schools of thought – and we wouldn’t like to say who is right – everyone works in different ways.

Some people believe that focusing on a single task alone for hours or days ensures the task gets done to the best of your ability. Others would aren’t able to focus on a single task for long – minds wander, and they’d be more productive focusing on a different task for a while and then returning to the original one with a fresh perspective.

We were always taught that Dads know best … (not sure if you agree or not!) The suggestion in this post is that their preferred way of keeping busy and engaged with tasks is to start three things at the same time… and switch between the one which best suits how you are feeling at any particular time. When your boss is not pushing you for deadlines we guess that’s OK. Sadly that’s not always the case.

These folks provide scientific evidence to suggest three things at a time isn’t such a good idea and that focusing on one thing is a much better idea.

“When you really study precisely what people’s brains are doing at any moment, there’s less concurrent processing than you might think … The brain is more of a time-share operation – when fractions of a second matter, we’re better off not doing another task.”

Hal Pashler, a professor of psychology at the University of California at San Diego.

So – what are your thoughts – if you did have the choice – how would you run your day – focusing on a single task until it was done… or good old fashioned multasking?!

Let us know what you think below.

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Image courtesy of kateatyrownrisk

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