Being Agile: Eleven Breakthrough Techniques to Keep You from “Waterfalling Backward”

One Thing at a Time Is More Efficient

Now we’ll spend some time exploring why multitasking is fraught with peril, starting with Figure 4.1.

Say you have three tasks, and each one is nominally expected to take a week to complete. If you refer to the top bars in Figure 4.1, focusing on the first task exclusively during the first week means that you have that task completed at the end of the first week. It’s done—it’s off your plate. And then you pick up the second task and complete it by the end of the second week, and likewise the third task. At the end of three weeks, you have all three tasks complete—right on schedule.

Figure 4.1 One Task at ...