How many resumes have you sent out listing “great multitasker” as one of your important work skills? A lot, I bet. While the ability to multitask is something to be proud of, it doesn’t really translate to being a productive trait. We’ve all come to accept that the ability to multitask is an ideal business virtue that solves all problems when it comes to work management. Now it seems that study after study deems multitasking is counterproductive.

Observe an office setting and you’ll immediately notice that may different activities and projects are being pursued at any given time. Many tasks get sidelined, tagged as unnecessary, go unfinished, labelled unimportant – all in the course of a project. No many how many people are on the team, or how many resources are poured into the project, there will always be tasks that we could have skipped over in order to get to the finish line.

The best industry leaders have the uncanny ability to focus on one point in the future even with chaos surrounding them. No matter how many moving targets there are, they keep their focus on the end goal. Most people would say it is a weakness to have such a limited point of view. But now, many people are beginning to see the proverbial bigger picture.

Nowadays, the operative word is “focus”. Time seems to slip by when you’re doing multiple tasks at a time. But really, the key is to identify those tasks that aren’t lean or streamlined, and then promptly abandon them. Because really, who would care if you let the lower priority tasks dwindle and die? No one really needs those hard copies, you can go with digital ones. Will painstakingly putting sticky tabs on the sign here spots really make that big a difference? The main idea is to not waste time doing tasks that are deemed low priority just for you to be able to say that you’re busy. Because that’s really what multitasking is, doing a high value job along with menial mindless tasks that you could just as easily do away with.

Here’s a trick that might work: President Dwight Eisenhower (a productivity powerhouse) once said “ what is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.” He has designed a matrix that’s great for weeding out what task can be addressed urgently and what needs to be focused on. Take a piece of paper and draw a cross, dividing the paper into 4 quadrants. Take a look at your to do list and decide whether they are urgent, not urgent, important, not very important. Your urgent and important tasks will fall under the “do it now” quadrant. Your important but not urgent tasks will fall under the “decide when” quadrant. Other task will fall under the “delegate” quadrant (who else can do it?) and the “delete” quadrant (these tasks are the ones you can ditch altogether).

Have you used the Eisenhower Matrix before? Have you had any success with it? Share your experience with us in the comments Stay humble and hustle hard.

Written by Jaie O. The Help