Single Tasking: the Most Productive Way to Stay Focused
Since reading The One Thing, I have believed in single tasking, the practice of finishing work by focusing on one thing at a time. After starting a company, however, my scope grew across PM, marketing, operations, HR, and business. I slowly fell into the trap of thinking that founders work well only when they handle many different tasks at the same time.
The misunderstanding behind multitasking
When work piles up, many people feel pressure to do several things at once. As I once did, you can even feel as if handling many things at the same time means you are good at work. Some think doing one thing at a time is for beginners. Others fear that if they handle tasks one by one, they will never finish.
In my case, I often jumped between product planning, outlining blog ideas, going back to the plan, reading newsletters, and researching the next feature. It felt as if I was doing four things at once and working productively, but that was an illusion.
In reality, multitasking lowers immersion and output. If the quality drops, you feel less satisfied with the result, and that low satisfaction makes deep focus even harder. By trying to do more through multitasking, you end up doing less with lower productivity. After repeating this cycle, I returned to single tasking. No matter how many tasks I had, I chose to focus on one at a time to raise productivity.
The note below is an excerpt from my journal written while I was reflecting on productivity at work.
June 10, 2023
Multitasking does not finish many tasks in a single moment. What really matters is this: intuitively rank priorities among many tasks, assign time on the calendar, then focus on one task at a time. Do not try to do several things at once. If I finish many tasks with low immersion, I will not be satisfied and I will be disappointed that I did not focus. I need to go back to single tasking to work with higher productivity.
How to practice single tasking with time blocking
Single tasking lets you create better results faster by immersing yourself in one task during a set time. Because you work with deeper focus, total time can shrink and the stress that comes from unfinished work can drop. Since single tasking means finishing one task in a given time window, time blocking is a simple and powerful way to manage your schedule.
1. Set priorities
Work arrives from many directions. If you work as a PM, tasks can appear at the same time from design, engineering, business, and marketing. You need priorities before you can assign time.
Do not spend too long choosing priorities. Execution matters more than planning. As I wrote in Prioritizing Work for Productive PM Scheduling, decide quickly using importance and urgency so you are ready to act.
2. Secure uninterrupted time
After setting priorities, secure time windows where you can fully focus. In real life, having every hour free for deep work is rare. Meetings, coffee chats, and urgent tickets can break immersion. If you know the hours you truly control, as in Day Theming for PMs, assign your high priority items to those windows and apply single tasking there.
3. Immerse in the task
The purpose of single tasking is higher productivity, so aim to finish the assigned task by going as deep as you can. You will not finish every time. If you cannot complete it, you can extend a little to wrap up, or reassign time and dive in again. The essence of scheduling is to work productively, not to obey a framework. After you block time, if you still have energy and focus, it can be better to keep going rather than stop just because the block ended. If the environment does not allow focus, reschedule and come back when you can immerse.