The worst thing you never knew you knew something about

Before you even get a chance to roll your eyes, let’s make sure of one thing: we’re not talking about multitasking. That’s been talked about forever, mulled over, and thoroughly dissected. And while multitasking is a pain, a source of frustration, and a rabid consumer of productivity, we’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to talk about its younger sibling--the even more annoying one. We’re talking about context switching.

While context switching is a form of multitasking, it’s certainly not the traditional form of multitasking you’re used to. This isn’t about distractedly trying to answer emails during a conference call. Shaving while you’re driving. Texting while walking the dog. It doesn’t take a supergenius to know that the quality of each task suffers, but the extent of the problem might come as a shock.

As the American Psychological Association points out, there are three types of multitasking:

• Classic multitasking: Trying to perform more than one task at a time.

• Rapid task switching: Going from one task to another in quick succession.

• Interrupted task switching: The worst. Having to switch from one task to another, before the first task is complete.

Interrupted task switching is particularly bad because it’s often the most distracting, is almost always controlled by external factors, and is likely the most harmful offender in terms of both actual productivity and the *feeling* of productivity. While the first one is pegged by Inc. as costing something like $4.5b, that latter feeling just might cost you your long term wellbeing.

Even worse than that (and this is where the diabolical little sibling part comes in)? Most people aren’t even aware this thing exists. They can hardly name or recognize this process. Interrupted task switching, a.k.a. context switching, costs a lot. Again from Inc.:

• We spend an average of just 1 minute and 15 seconds on a task before being interrupted.

• It takes an average of 25 minutes to resume a task after being interrupted.

• Heavily multitasking can temporarily lower your IQ by up to 15 points. Crazy, right? It’s literally making us dumber.

So clearly, the only thing we can do is abolish all interruptions by living inside a bubble on the top of an unpopulated mountain. Well, kind of, actually. It turns out that it’s pretty hard for all of us to focus intently on one thing and then shift to deep focus on another. We can mitigate this harshness by combining like-minded tasks. Try to have all your meetings in one day, for example. I, personally, like to do all the paperwork sorts of things on one particular day. Or maybe you have a social media responsibility. Try to do the catching up, the scheduling, and the posting together. Research shows that “batching” like-minded tasks makes us able to tackle more initiatives—and, better yet, finish them!

We’d be remiss if we didn’t talk about the elephant. It’s email. Email is one of the biggest distractions of our day. As the Harvard Business Review points out, you shouldn’t use your email inbox as a task list or tracker. Email is probably contributing to more task switching than you realize. That’s why you ought to schedule email triage time.

This is where the game can be changed: send everything to Request Tracker! Whether the bulk of your emails relate to ongoing projects, new tasks, or customer service-related things, Request Tracker ensures every email, request, and action item gets the attention it deserves. All the to-do mail gets sorted automatically. Even better, you can silence those pesky notifications that play on your FOMO. It’s worth noting that even having just notifications come through can foment some FOMO feelings. Best to simply flip your phone over and close out of email when you’re not in triage mode.

Beyond triage and at another, deeper level of email management, Request Tracker provides a comprehensive toolset for request and task management compared to traditional email:

Centralized Task Management: Unlike scattered email threads, RT provides a centralized system for email and, well, lots of things! Viola! Less clutter, more clarity.

• Due Dates and Service Level Agreements (SLAs): Request Tracker allows you to set and highlight due dates and can also be configured to adhere to SLAs. Much like the squeaky wheel, flagged tickets approaching or exceeding their resolution times more often get the grease.

•Internal Comments & Collaboration: RT offers a suite of features where team members can add internal comments not visible to the client or end-user. This allows for private team discussions and brainstorming within the same ticket interface. Multiple team members can simultaneously work on a ticket, and all history is kept there for everyone’s benefit..

• Custom Fields: Unlike normal email, which has a standard set of fields, RT allows you to add custom fields tailored to your specific needs, enabling more detailed ticket categorization and tracking.

Which brings up a final thought: if you’re fried, brain dead, or otherwise spent? Don’t give up on staying useful! Everyone has tasks that are necessary to do, but don’t require much critical thinking. Tackle those when you realize it’s the best you can do. Focusing on a mundane task actually centers your brain, and allows you to start thinking more clearly again.

We can’t eliminate interruptions, in the end. Honestly? We probably wouldn’t want to. A lot of the good stuff in life happens there. But we’d be better off to make sure we have the right tools around us, like Request Tracker, a decent plan, and the willingness to implement what we know can make the proverbial lemonade. It’s quite possible to control things on our end to make interruptions work better *with* you, rather than against you.

Got experiences to share? We’re all ears! Good or bad, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Find us on Twitter (@bestpractical)! Even better—can we help your team ditch the shared email inbox? Schedule a demo today!

Cover your Assets

Let’s say you have a sales team of 16. Janie has a laptop, a phone, a desktop, and an old iPad she scrounged from an intern’s desk for a one-time need. Jamal has two phones (don’t ask), one new and one “broken” laptop, and keeps insisting he needs a desktop even though he’s never in the office. Ron, on the other hand, is something of a Luddite, uses an old flip-phone he owns himself, and barely does his reporting at all—let alone on his laptop.

Do any of these people sound familiar? Are you in an office or lab like this? Your company, presumably, owns these assets (and a pretty vast number of others), paid for them, and is (or ought to) managing them. But who’s really doing that? Who’s putting on the IT inventory hat to keep up with an unending, ever-changing landscape?

Historically, most of the IT assets rested within an organization’s domain. However, now with a boom in remote work and the lessons from Covid, the challenges of managing IT assets have multiplied. Hardware has left the building and new apps and services multiply. One of the biggest challenges with the proliferation of services and technology is that assets often get tracked in a lot of different places by a lot of different people. Often, no single person owns everything, let alone has visibility into all the systems. And without the right tools in place, no single platform collects and centralizes asset data across your organization. How can you make informed decisions without a clear picture? This is where a robust solution is critical. Your boss’ Excel spreadsheet is not a robust solution, by the way.

It’s worth noting here that many organizations don’t merely have a need for better asset management–they have a mandate. Recently in New York state, a school district was audited for its inability to locate any number of pieces of hardware. In this case, at least, they had tools in place, but used them inefficiently. Many organizations simply do not know what assets they own, what shape they’re in, or where they’re located. 

The good news is that implementing a system for robust asset management doesn’t have to be either complicated or costly. Request Tracker is a widely supported, open source asset tracking system, among other things. You and your team can confidently know what assets you have, who has your assets, and where your assets are—all from one place. You can even easily import your boss’ Excel spreadsheet! With options for email and self-service portals and built-in reporting, you could even build a documentation culture! Imagine that! Anyone can play along!

One of the most powerful advantages to using Request Tracker (RT) is that it’s almost infinitely customizable. You get to set up an asset management system that works for you. As always, and unlike other products in the market today, RT never gates its features. Your team gets every feature there is right out of the box. Also, being open source, there are no per seat charges. RT scales at your pace. 

Perhaps best of all? Request Tracker offers a free trial so that you can spend actual time in a fully-functioning program. See how your team can explore new asset tracking capabilities with Request Tracker.