古普塔能够用实打实的经济案例来证实自己的观点。在过去十年中，他的公司一直致力于帮助客户摆脱一心二用的习惯，使得一些机构的生产力提高了50%或以上，如西门子（Siemens）、波音公司（Boeing）、达美航空公司（Delta）和美国空军（U.S. Air Force），估计总共为这些企业带来了35亿美元的额外现金和利润。

    举两个例子：通过重新设计流程，杜绝多管齐下，医疗软件制造商美敦力公司（Medtronic）将其新品发布时间从九个月缩短到了两个月。波音公司通过消除多管齐下的现象，将卫星制造的生产率提高了64%。

    古普塔称：“毫无疑问，一次集中精力只做一件事情，能够让人们提高效率，带来真正的竞争优势。”很好，但是在实践中，如何下定决心减少一心二用的情况呢？

    “首先，弄清楚一心二用的原因，”古普塔建议道。他发现，实现咨询公司的企业客户中，造成这种情况的原因主要有两个。

    “第一个原因是，因为缺乏充分的准备，没法一鼓作气完成工作，干到一半只能停下来，”古普塔说。“因此，你只好放下这个任务，去做别的事情。”

    补救方法：事先对任务进行分析，动手之前，确保完成任务所需的一切条件都已就绪。

    第二个主要原因——似乎也就是造成你一心多用的原因——即“老板对工作的轻重缓急缺乏明确的概念，因此他希望靠你同时处理多个任务来弥补这一点。”

    解决这个问题需要运用一些交际手段。下一次，如果你已经超负荷运转，老板又丢给你别的工作，你就应当“坐下来跟他谈谈，让他把各种任务按照优先级进行排序，”古普塔建议。“哪些事最重要，需要立即完成，哪些任务可以稍后处理？”

    当然，也许无需问老板，你自己就能确定各项任务的优先次序。这种情况下，得习惯于设置自己的优先事项，然后按顺序逐项完成。当然，这需要一些练习。毕竟，一心二用和其他习惯一样，很难打破。但是，古普塔说：“你会发现，工作效率提高了，工作质量更好了，所有的努力是值得的。”祝你好运。

发表评论：你是否认为自己是个多任务处理高手？你认为同时做多件事情，效率更高还是更低？请在下面发表评论。

    译者：qian

    Gupta can back up his views on this with dollars-and-cents evidence. For the past 10 years, his company has been helping clients rid their projects of multitasking, which has boosted productivity at outfits like Siemens (SI), Boeing (BA), Delta, and the U.S. Air Force by 50% or more, adding an estimated total of $3.5 billion in extra cash and profits.

    A couple of examples: By redesigning processes to eliminate multitasking, medical software maker Medtronic (MDT) cut its new-product release time from nine months to two months. At Boeing, cutting out multitasking boosted productivity on the manufacture of satellites by 64%.

    "There is no question that concentrating on one thing at a time will make you more productive and give you a real competitive advantage," Gupta says. Fine, but in practical terms, how do you keep your resolution to cut down on multitasking?

    "First, take a look at why you are multitasking in the first place," he suggests. In the companies where Realizations does its consulting work, Gupta sees two main causes of doing several things at once.

    "The first one is, you interrupt yourself in the middle of a task because something is missing, so you aren't prepared to finish it," he says. "So you drop it and do something else."

    The remedy for that: Analyze the task in advance and make sure before you start that you have everything you'll need to carry it through to the end.

    The second chief cause -- and the one that seems to apply to your situation -- is that "your boss lacks clear priorities, so he expects you to multitask to make up for that."

    Fixing this will take some diplomacy on your part. The next time he throws you something else to do when you're already overloaded, "sit down with him and ask him to rank the various assignments in order of priority," Gupta advises. "Which are the most important things to get done immediately, and which ones can wait a bit?"

    Of course, you may well be able to determine this for yourself without asking, in which case you'll have to get used to setting your own priorities -- and then sticking with them. This will take some practice. Multitasking can, after all, be as hard a habit to break as any other. But, says Gupta, "you will find that your increased productivity, and better quality of work, is worth the effort." Good luck.

Talkback: Do you consider yourself a proficient multitasker? Do you find that doing several things at once makes you more productive, or less so? Leave a comment below.