Every time I walk out of my house, my hands seem to be overflowing with stuff. My backpack, food, gym bag, recycling, trash, keys, phone. When I get out of my car at the end of the day, it feels exactly the same. Rather than take a second to put my phone and keys in my pocket, put my various water bottles, coffee mugs and trash into a bag, it’s all dangling in my hands.
Oddly enough, trying to grab everything at the same time feels like the smart thing to do. Save time and trips. But inevitably something falls, then I can’t bend over to pick it up because my hands are tied up and the bags over my shoulder inevitably fall off. Joy…

Then I realize, this is so representative of my entire life. How you do anything is how you do everything. Sigh…

How about your organization? Does your to-do list look something like growing revenue, cutting costs, finding the best talent, launching a new product/service, fix your website, improve your marketing, find a good CRM, map out your processes, solidify good partnerships, and on and on and on…

Do these all feel like an absolute priority? Both urgent and important? If everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority.

We are all trained to think we can successfully juggle 27 balls at the same time. The reality is however that multitasking is a myth. Inevitably, something in the mix suffers and often, everything suffers. Nothing really progresses at the speed it could due to the constant distraction.

Sophie Leroy, assistant professor in the UW Bothell School of Business, call this attention residue. She says that “attention residue is when thoughts about a task persist and intrude while performing another task,” The lingering thoughts take up mental capacity and reduce your ability to focus on the new task at hand.