Before you start

This is a short book and you can read it in two or three sittings. It would suit the argument if you read it without doing anything else at the same time, but that's up to you.

It's about one habit. You work on several things at once. You start a report, answer a message, go back to the report, remember a form, open the form, take a call, and return to find you've forgotten what the next sentence was going to be. You're busy from the moment you sit down. At the end of the day you have six things in progress and nothing finished, and you're more tired than the day's output seems to justify.

I'm going to argue three things. The first is that juggling makes sense from the inside. There are many demands on you, all of them seem to want attention now, and moving between them feels like keeping up. The second is that you're not doing several things at once. You're switching between them, each switch has a cost, and the costs are larger than they seem and easy to miss. A task that's half done has delivered nothing yet, and it still takes up room in your head. And the sense of having been productive all day is a poor guide to what got done. The third is practical. You pick one thing, work on it until a stopping point you've named in advance, and leave yourself a note before you touch anything else. Chapters 16 to 19 cover how.

This book doesn't say you should ignore your colleagues, or that every interruption can be refused, or that you should never have the radio on while you cook. Chapter 2 says which kinds of doubling-up work perfectly well.

Two cautions.

Some people find it unusually hard to stay with one task for reasons that aren't habit. The NHS describes ADHD in adults as a condition where the brain works differently, and its signs include being easily distracted, finding it hard to organise your time, and finding it hard to finish tasks. It says the symptoms usually start before the age of twelve. If that sounds like your whole life and not only your recent working habits, and it's affecting your work or relationships, the NHS advice is to see a GP. The ideas here may still help, but they're no substitute for an assessment.

And if you're juggling because your workload is truly more than one person can do, the problem is the workload, and no method will fix it. A book like this can help you work better within your hours. It shouldn't be used to squeeze more out of someone who's already overloaded, by you or by your employer.

The notes at the back give my sources and their limits. Where I'm giving my own reasoning and not a finding, I'll say so.