Is multi-tasking actually a good thing?

The ability to juggle 5 different things at once is my professional super power. If you’ve signed up for this newsletter, it’s probably yours too. One of the best parts of being in Ops is that you touch multiple focus areas and in order to do it well, you have to be exceptionally good at context switching. 

More recently though, I’ve started to realize that my likeness for multi-tasking might also be my biggest weakness. Here’s why: 

In learning how to be great at moving fast, I’ve forgotten when it’s important to move slow. 

It’s often up to us as the founding operator to fill in the gaps and frequently, that type of work lends itself to moving quickly to accomplish many small tasks - fire off Slack messages to check-in with customers, set up a Stripe invoice, make a reservation for an upcoming offsite… I could go on and on. 

Sometimes we use the number of tasks that we’ve accomplished as our metric for success rather than the impact of those tasks. 

Don’t get me wrong - being malleable and able to move quickly is a crucial part of being a founding operator. 

But it’s only half the story. Being able to create a holistic picture across multiple work streams and helping to prioritize what’s important is a far greater value add. 

Jonni and I are both really lucky to work with founders that push us to think more strategically. And as our companies grow, the value of thinking slowly is becoming more important, and the cost of not doing so is more detrimental. 

Easier said than done in a start-up work culture that’s all about moving fast, right? This is certainly not something I’ve mastered yet. In fact, it’s probably my biggest area of improvement right now. 

But I thought I’d share a couple pieces of advice that have worked well for me so far: 

Decide whether a piece of work needs fast or slow thinking upfront. Adding feature requests to Linear? Potentially fast. Building out a cash flow forecast for the next 12 months? Definitely slow thinking. Before starting a task, I’m trying to mindfully make a decision on how best to approach it.

Block off 1 hour weekly to collect your thoughts. Some of my best thinking lately has come from the hour  that I take during lunch once a week to go on a run (or to walk to the bakery for a sweet treat). Taking this time in the middle of the day means that I’ve already started thinking about work and I can use it to think more high-level. 

Be open to feedback. Transparently, my thinking around this didn’t come out of the blue. It’s part of an ongoing conversation I’ve been having with my founders on how I can continue to improve in my role. Their help as I’ve been thinking about this more has been crucial. 

We love talking about how good we are at wearing different hats and fire fighting. But we don’t talk about the cost of doing so enough. Sometimes, thinking slowly is the better approach. 

Is this something that you can relate to? We’d love to hear your thoughts on this and if we hear any great pieces of advice, we’ll include them in our next newsletter!